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BEST AMERICAN 
ESSAYS 



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JOHN R. I^OWARD 

BEST AMERICAN POEMS," " BEST 
AMERICAN orations"; MANAGING EDITOR, 
"LIBRARY OF THE WORLD'S BEST 
POETRY," ETC. 



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By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 



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^ PREFACE 

; Among reflective writers the Essay has been a 
favorite Uterary mode, commending itself also to 
readers. Briefer, less formal, and less complete 
than the treatise, it is indeed rather an incentive to 
thought upon a theme than exhaustive treatment. 
Without definite orderliness, it allows great freedom, 
and its desultory reflections may be observant or 
learned, grave or gay, graceful or earnest, at the 
mood of the writer. 

It comes in many guises, — in literary discussion or 
criticism, as in the articles herein by Poe and Long- 
fellow; in demonstration of theories or advocacy 
of principles, as in Hamilton's ^'Federalist" papers; 
in allegorical fancies, conveying social or ethical 
ideas, as in many of the sketches of Irving, or Haw- 
thorne, or Curtis; in contemplative passages during 
the flow of narrative fiction, as Fielding's introduc- 
tions to the divisions in ''Tom Jones," or Mrs. 
Stowe's chapter herein from "The Minister's Woo- 
ing"; in presentation of suggestive thoughts on sci- 
ence, or art, or any partial elements of a great sub- 
ject; even in familiar letters, real or imitative, as 
Bacon describes Seneca's Epistles to Lucretius, which, 
he says, "are but essays, that is, dispersed medita- 

iii 



iv PREFACE 

tions''; and in other ingenious methods of gaining 
the attention and interest of readers. 

Bacon is credited with inventing the name, as 
well as unique in mastery of the thing, in his famous 
^^ Essays/' While both the French and the Ger- 
mans have notable examples of the Essay, it is in 
EngUsh literature that the fashion most abounds. 
American writers at first naturally followed English 
models; yet the sensible Frankhn, the cogent Ham- 
ilton, the serious-minded Channing, began American 
thinking very early; Emerson — the American es- 
sayist, par excellence — struck an entirely original 
note, and his influence, with the fresh variations of 
American life and interest, has had great effect upon 
succeeding writers. 

The Essay has never been more generally and 
acceptably cultivated than in recent years among 
American authors, but the necessary limitations of 
such a collection as the present compel a restriction 
to writers not now Hving, — and, indeed, to a com- 
paratively few of those. The separate notices 
prefacing our varied selections give reasons for their 
inclusion. 

Poe, in his essay on ^^The Philosophy of Com- 
position'' (pp. 87-106), says, with special reference 
to poems: ^^If any Uterary work is too long to be 
read at one sitting, we must be content to dispense 
with the immensely important effect derivable from 
unity of impression; for if two sittings be required, 



PREFACE V 

the affairs of the world interfere, and everything 
Hke totality is at once destroyed." This limit of 
space and consequent need of compact expression 
draw from Hamilton W. Mabie — himself a success- 
ful essayist of our day — this discriminating re- 
mark: ^ ^^One must be a master of the art to pack 
a thought within the confines of a sonnet and yet 
evoke its complete suggestiveness; and one must 
command the higher resources of thought and of 
speech to put a philosophy into an essay." 

These elements, it is believed, will be found well 
exemplified in the Essays here presented. It would 
be easy to double the number of authors worthy 
of representation. Indeed, such a selection as this 
involves the careful reading of many more writers, 
not only, but of various productions of each^ — 
^^ many called, few chosen." The essential aim is to 
arrive at a choice that shall be representative of the 
best in quality and variety, while restricted to such 
a number as may come within the limits of the 
^^ handy volume." 

Lowell, recommending wise choice in books, says: 
'^I should be half inclined to say that any reading 
was better than none, allaying the crudeness of the 
statement by the Yankee proverb which tells us that, 
though all deacons are good, there's odds in dea- 
cons.' " Surely, in this gathered company there are 
of the best. 

^ *'The Essay and Some Essayists." 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



Benjamin Franklin 

The Way to Wealth 3 

The Whistle l8 

Alexander Hamilton 

Defects of the Original Confederation ... 25 

Objects and Powers of a Federal Union ... 40 

William Ellery Channing 

On a National Literature ...... 49 

Washington Irving 

The MutabiHty of Literature ..... 69 

V Edgar Allan Poe 

The Philosophy of Composition .... 87 

^Ralph Waldo Emerson 

Compensation 109 

Sarah Margaret Fuller Ossoli 

Growth: In Man ; in Woman ..... 139 

Henry David Thorf:au 

SoUtude 155 

^ Nathaniel Hawthorne 

Fire-worship . . . . , , . .169 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Defense of Poetry 185 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Oliver Wendell Holmes 

Table Talk 209 

Harriet Beecher Stowe 

Romance 235 

Henry Ward Beecher 

Dream-culture . , , 249 

James Russell Lowell 

At Sea 259 

George William Curtis 

My Chateaux . . . . . . . .271 

Donald Grant Mitchell 

Beside a City Grate : Anthracite .... 289 

Charles Dudley Warner 

Christmas : Juventus Mundi ; Giving as a Luxury . 301 

Henry Timrod 

A Theory of Poetry 311 

Sidney Lanier 

From Bacon to Beethoven . , . . , 327 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

I 706-1 790 



Among the many brilliant names illumining the revolutionary 
and constructive periods of the young American nation, men 
great in intellectual and moral stature, common sense incarnated 
in Benjamin Franklin has made his name, his deeds, and his 
sayings the most familiarly known in the civilized world. 

His lowly origin, and his patient, steady rise from the Bos- 
ton tallow-chandler's apprentice to the Philadelphia printer, 
writer, editor, clerk of the legislature, British Colonial Post- 
master-general, Commissioner for the Colonies in England, 
Ambassador to France, President of Pennsylvania, and mem- 
ber of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, are known of all. 
His many inventions, his scientific experiments and con- 
clusions, his admirable citizenship, his diplomacy abroad, were 
all based upon the broadest good sense ; while his industrious 
pen set forth his ideas with a logic so forcefully simple, enliv- 
ened by humor and a ready wit, that it bore the sanity of his 
mind throughout America and Western Europe. His dis- 
covery of the electrical nature of lightning and his influence in 
freeing America, led Turgot, the great French minister of 
finance, to write under his portrait : — 

Eripuit ccbIo fulmen, sceptrumque tyrannis} 

Perhaps the most characteristic product of Franklin's pen was 
'*Poor Richard's Almanac'* — a kind of literature common in 
his day of few books — which he published annually from 
1733 to 1758, with a yearly sale of 10,000 copies. His preface 
to the issue for 1758, which has been reprinted hundreds — 
perhaps thousands — of times as ^'The Way to Wealth," is 
here reproduced, as well as one of his letters to a friend in Paris, 
containing his witty essay known as "The Whistle." Frank- 
lin's Autobiography is a wonderful narrative, its simple lu- 
cidity making it one of the classics of the language. 

^ He snatched the thunderbolt from heaven, and the scepter 
from tyrants. 



THE WAY TO WEALTH 

THE PREFACE TO 

POOR RICHARD'S ALMANAC 

FOR 1858 

In his Autobiography, FrankHn writes of the 
Almanac as follows: — 

"I endeavored to make it both entertaining and 
useful ; and it accordingly came to be in such demand, 
that I reaped considerable profit from it, vending 
annually near ten thousand. And observing that it 
was generally read, scarce any neighborhood in the 
province being without it, I considered it as a proper 
vehicle for conveying instruction among the common 
people, who bought scarcely any other books; I 
therefore filled all the little spaces that occurred 
between the remarkable days in the calendar with 
proverbial sentences, chiefly such as inculcated in- 
dustry and frugality as the means of procuring 
wealth, and thereby securing virtue; it being more 
difficult for a man in want to act always honestly, 
as, to use here one of those proverbs, ^ It is hard for 
an empty sack to stand uprights 

"These proverbs, which contain the wisdom of 
many ages and nations, I assembled and formed into 

3 



4 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

a connected discourse, prefixed to the almanac of 
1757/ as the harangue of a wise old man to the people 
attending an auction. The bringing all these scattered 
counsels thus into a focus enabled them to make 
greater impression. The piece, being universally 
approved, was copied in all the newspapers of the 
[American] continent; reprinted in Britain on a 
broadside, to be stuck up in houses; two transla- 
tions were made of it in French, and great num- 
bers bought by the clergy and gentry, to distribute 
gratis among their poor parishioners and tenants. 
In Pennsylvania, as it discouraged useless expense 
in foreign superfluities, some thought it had its 
share of influence in producing that growing plenty 
of money which was observable for several years 
after its publication." 



Courteous Reader, 

I have heard that nothing gives an author so great 
pleasure, as to find his w^orks respectfully quoted by 
other learned authors. This pleasure I have seldom 
enjoyed. For though I have been, if I may say it 
without vanity, an eminent author of Almanacs annu- 
ally, now for a full quarter of a century, my brother- 
authors in the same way, for what reason I know not, 
have ever been very sparing in their applauses; and 

^ He wrote the "harangue" in 1757, preparing it for the 
Almanac of 1758. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 5 

no other author has taken the least notice of me, so 
that did not my writings produce me some solid pud- 
ding, the great deficiency of praise would have quite 
discouraged me. 

I concluded at length, that the people were the best 
judges of my merit; for they buy my works; and 
besides, in my rambles, where I am not personally 
known, I have frequently heard one or other of my 
adages repeated, with, as Poor Richard says, at the 
end on't; this gave me some satisfaction, as it 
showed, not only that my instructions were regarded, 
but discovered likewise some respect for my author- 
ity; and I own, that to encourage the practice of 
remembering and repeating those sentences, I have 
sometimes quoted myself with great gravity. 

Judge, then, how much I must have been gratified 
by an incident I am going to relate to you. I stopped 
my horse lately where a great number of people were 
collected at a vendue of merchant goods. The hour 
of sale not being come, they were conversing on the 
badness of the times, and one of the company called 
to a plain, clean old man with white locks, ^^Pray, 
Father Abraham, what think you of the times? 
Won't these heavy taxes quite ruin the country? 
How shall we be ever able to pay them? What 
would you advise us to?'' Father Abraham stood 
up and replied, ^'If you'd have my advice, I'll give 
it you in short, for A word to the wise is enough, and 
Many words wonHfill a bushel, as Poor Richard says." 



6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

They joined in desiring him to speak his mind, and 
gathering round him, and he proceeded as follows: — 
Friends, says he, and neighbors, the taxes are in- 
deed very heavy, and if those laid on by the govern- 
ment were the only ones we had to pay, we might 
more easily discharge them: but we have many 
others, and much more grievous to some of us. We are 
taxed twice as much by our Idleness^ three times as 
much by our Pride, and four times as much by our 
Folly, and fronii these taxes the commissioners can- 
not ease or deHver us by allowing an abatement. 
However, let us hearken to good advice, and some- 
thing may be done for us ; God helps them that help 
themselves, as Poor Richard says in his Almanac of 

1733- 

It would be thought a hard government that 
should tax its people one-tenth part of their Time, 
to be employed in its service, but Idleness taxes many 
of us much more, if we reckon all that is spent in 
absolute Sloth, or doing of nothing, with that which 
is spent in idle employments or amusements, that 
amount to nothing. Sloth, by bringing on diseases, 
absolutely shortens life. Sloth, like rust, consumes 
faster than labor wears, while the used key is always 
bright, as Poor Richard says. But Dost thou love 
life? then do not squander Time, for thafs the stuff 
life is made of, as Poor Richard says. 

How much more than is necessary do we spend in 
sleep ? forgetting, that The sleeping fox catches no 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 7 

poultry J and that There will be sleeping enough in the 
grave, as Poor Richard says. If time be of all things 
the most precious, Wasting of time must be, as Poor 
Richard says, the greatest prodigality; since, as he 
elsewhere tells us. Lost time is never found again; and 
what we call Time enough, always proves little enough. 
Let us then up and be doing, and doing to the pur- 
pose; so, by diligence, shall we do more with less 
perplexity. Sloth makes all things difficult, but in- 
dustry all things easy, as Poor Richard says ; and He 
that riseth late must trot all day, and shall scarce over- 
take his business at night; while Laziness travels so 
slowly that Poverty soon overtakes him, as we read in 
Poor Richard, who adds. Drive thy business, let not 
that drive thee, and Early to bed and early to rise 
makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. 

So what signifies wishing and hoping for better 
times ? We may make these times better, if we bestir 
ourselves. Industry need not wish, as Poor Richard 
says, and He that lives on hope will die fasting. There 
are no gains without pains; then help, hands, for I 
have no lands; or, if I have, they are smartly taxed. 
And, as Poor Richard likewise observes. He that 
hath a trade hath an estate, and He that hath a calling 
hath an office of profit and honor; but then the trade 
must be worked at, and the calling well followed, or 
neither the estate nor the office will enable us to pay 
our taxes. If we are industrious we shall never 
starve; for, as Poor Richard says, At the working- 



8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

man's house hunger looks in, but dares not enter. Nor 
will the bailiff or the constable enter, for Industry 
pays debts while despair increaseth them. 

What though you have found no treasure, nor has 
any rich relation left you a legacy. Diligence is the 
mother of good luck, as Poor Richard says, and God 
gives all things to industry. Then Plough deep while 
sluggards sleep, and you shall have corn to sell and to 
keep,ssiys Poor Dick. Work while it is called to-day, 
for you know not how much you may be hindered 
to-morrow, which makes Poor Richard say, One 
to-day is worth two to-morrows; and farther. Have 
you somewhat to do to-morrow? Do it to-day. If 
you were a servant, would you not be ashamed 
that a good master should catch you idle ? Are you 
then your own master, Be ashamed to catch yourself 
idle, as Poor Dick says. When there is so much to 
be done for yourself, your family, your country, and 
your gracious king, be up by peep of day. Let not 
the sun look down and say. Inglorious here he lies. 
Handle your tools without mittens; remember that 
The cat in gloves catches no mice! as Poor Richard 
says. 'Tis true there is much to be done, and per- 
haps you are weak-handed; but stick to it steadily, 
and you will see great effects, for Constant dropping 
wears away stones; and By diligence and patience 
the mouse ate in two the cable; and Little strokes fell 
great oaks, as Poor Richard says in his Almanac, the 
year I cannot just now remember. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 9 

Methinks I hear some of you say, "Must a man 
afford himself no leisure?'' I will tell thee, my 
friend, what Poor Richard says. Employ thy time 
well, if thou meanest to gain leisure; and. Since thou 
art not sure of a minute, throiv not away an hour. 
Leisure is time for doing something useful; this lei- 
sure the diligent man will obtain, but the lazy man 
never; so that, as Poor Richard says, A life of leisure 
and a life of laziness are two things. Do you imagine 
that sloth will afford you more comfort than labor ? 
No, for as Poor Richard says. Trouble springs from 
idleness, and grievous toil from needless ease. Many 
without labor would live by their wits only, but they 
break for want of stock; whereas industry gives com- 
fort, and plenty, and respect. Fly pleasures, and 
theyll follow you. The diligent spinner has a large 
shift; and Now I have a sheep and a cow, everybody 
bids me good-morrow, all which is well said by Poor 
Richard. 

But with our industry we must likewise be steady, 
settled, and careful, and oversee our own affairs with 
our own eyes, and not trust too much to others: for, 
as Poor Richard says: — 

/ never saw an oft-removed tree 

Nor yet an oft-removed family 

That throve so well as those that settled be. 

And again, Three removes is as bad as a fire; and 
again, Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee; 



10 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

and again, If you would have your business done, go; 
if not, send. And again, He that by the plough would 
thrive, himself must either hold or drive. 

And again. The eye of a master will do more work 
than both his hands; and again. Want of care does 
us more damage than want of knowledge; and again, 
Not to oversee workmen is to leave them your purse 
open. Trusting too much to others' care is the ruin 
of many; for, as the Almanac says. In the affairs of 
this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want 
of it; but a man's own care is profitable; for saith 
Poor Dick, Learning is to the studious, and Riches 
to the careful; as well as, Power to the bold, and Heavefi 
to the virtuous. And farther, // you would have a 
faithful servant, and one that you like, serve yourself. 
And again, he adviseth to circumspection and care, 
even in the smallest matters; because sometimes A 
little neglect may breed great mischief, adding, For 
want of a nail the shoe was lost; for want of a shoe 
the horse was lost; and for want of a horse the rider 
was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, 
all for want of a Uttle care about a horseshoe nail. 

So much for Industry, my friends, and attention to 
one's own business; but to these we must add Fru- 
gality, if we would make our industry more certainly 
successful. A man may, if he knows not how to save 
as he gets, keep his nose all his life to the grindstone, 
and die not worth a groat at last. A fat kitchen makes a 
lean will, as Poor Richard says; and — 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN II 

Many estates are spent in the getting, 

Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting, 

And men for punch forsook hewing and splitting. 

If you would be wealthy, says he in another Almanac, 
think of saving as well as of getting. The Indies have 
not made Spain rich; because her outgoes are greater 
than her incomes. Away, then, with your expensive 
follies, and you will not have so much cause to com- 
plain of hard times, heavy taxes, and chargeable 
families; for as Poor Dick says : — 

Women and wine, game and deceit. 

Make the wealth small and the wants great. 

And farther. What maintains one vice would bring up 
two children. You may think, perhaps, that a little 
tea, or a little punch now and then, diet a little more 
costly, clothes a little finer, and a little more enter- 
tainment now and then, can be no great matter; but 
remember what Poor Richard says, Many a little 
makes a mickle; and farther, Beware of little expenses; 
a small leak will sink a great ship; and again. Who 
dainties love, shall beggars prove; and moreover, Fools 
make feasts, and wise men eat them. 

Here are you all got together at this vendue of 
fineries and knick-knacks. You call them goods; 
but, if you do not take care, they will prove evils 
to some of you. You expect they will be sold cheap, 
and perhaps they may for less than they cost: but, 
if you have no occasion for them, they must be dear 



12 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

to you. Remember what Poor Richard says: Buy 
what thou hast no need of^ and ere long thou shall sell 
thy necessaries. And again, At a great pennyworth 
pause a while. He means, that perhaps the cheap- 
ness is apparent only, and not real; or the bargain, 
by straitening thee in thy business, may do thee more 
harm than good. For in another place he says. 
Many have been ruined by buying good pennyworths. 
Again, Poor Richard says, ^Tis foolish to lay out 
money in a purchase of repentance; and yet this folly 
is practised every day at vendues for want of minding 
the Almanac, Wise men^ as Poor Richard says, learn 
by others^ harms; fools, scarcely by their own; but 
Felix quern faciunt aliena pericula cautum,^ Many a 
one, for the sake of finery on the back, has gone with 
a hungry belly, and half-starved their families. 
Silks and satins, scarlets and velvets, as Poor Richard 
says, put out the kitchen fire. These are not the 
necessaries of life; they can scarcely be called the 
conveniences ; and yet, only because they look pretty, 
how many want to have them! The artificial wants 
of mankind thus become more numerous than the 
natural; and, as Poor Dick says. For one poor person 
there are a hundred indigent. By these, and other 
extravagances, the genteel are reduced to poverty, 
and forced to borrow of those whom they formerly 
despised, but who through industry and frugality 
have maintained their standing; in which case it 

^ Happy he, whom others' perils make Cautious, 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 13 

appears plainly, that A ploughman on his legs is 
higher than a gentleman on his knees , as Poor Richard 
says. Perhaps they have had a small estate left 
them, which they knew not the getting of, — they 
think, ^Tis day, and will never be night; that A little 
to be spent out of so much is not worth mindifig; (A 
child and a fool, as Poor Richard says, imagine twenty 
shillings and twenty years can never be spent,) but 
Always taking out of the meal-tub, and never putting 
in, soon comes to the bottom; then, as Poor Dick 
says. When the welVs dry, they know the worth of water. 
But this they might have known before, if they had 
taken his advice. // you would know the value of 
money, go and try to borrow some; for He that goes a 
borrowing, goes a sorrowing, and indeed so does he 
that lends to such people, when he goes to get it in 
again. 

Poor Dick further advises, and says : — 

Fond pride of dress is, sure, a very curse; 
Ere fancy you consult, consult your purse. 

And again. Pride is as loud a beggar as Want, and a 
great deal more saucy. When you have bought one 
fine thing, you must buy ten more, that your appear- 
ance may be all of a piece; but Poor Dick says, ^Tis 
easier to suppress the first desire, than to satisfy all 
that follow it. And 'tis as truly folly for the poor to 
ape the rich, as for the frog to swell in order to equal 
the ox. 



14 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

Vessels large may venture more, 

But little boats should keep near shore, 

'Tis, however, a folly soon punished; for, Pride 
that dines on vanity sups on contempt, as Poor Rich- 
ard says. And in another place, Pride breakfasted 
with Plenty, dined with Poverty, and supped with 
Infamy, And after all, of what use is this pride of 
appearance, for which so much is risked, so much is 
suffered! It cannot promote health or ease pain; 
it makes no increase of merit in the person; it creates 
envy; it hastens misfortune. 

What is a butterfly? At best 
He's but a caterpillar drest. 
The gaudy fop^s his picture justy 

as Poor Richard says. 

But what madness must it be to run in debt for 
these superfluities! We are offered, by the terms of 
this vendue, six months' credit; and that, perhaps, 
has induced some of us to attend it, because we can- 
not spare the ready money, and hope now to be fine 
without it. But, ah! think what you do when you 
run in debt; You give to another power over your 
liberty. If you cannot pay at the time, you will 
be ashamed to see your creditor ; you will be in fear 
when you speak to him; you will make poor, pitiful, 
sneaking excuses, and by degrees come to lose your 
veracity, and sink into base downright lying; for, 
as Poor Richard says, The second vice is lying, the first 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 15 

is running in debt; and again, to the same purpose, 
Lying rides upon debfs back; whereas a free-born 
EngUshman ought not to be ashamed or afraid to see 
or speak to any man Uving. But poverty often 
deprives a man of all spirit and virtue; ^Tis hard 
for an empty bag to stand upright! as Poor Richard 
truly says. What would you think of that prince, 
or that government, who should issue an edict for- 
bidding you to dress Uke a gentleman or gentle- 
woman, on pain of imprisonment or servitude ? 
Would you not say, that you are free, have a right to 
dress as you please, and that such an edict would be a 
breach of your privileges, and such a government 
tyrannical ? And yet you are about to put yourself 
under such tyranny, when you run in debt for such 
dress! Your creditor has authority, at his pleasure, 
to deprive you of your liberty, by confining you in 
jail for life, or to sell you for a servant, if you should 
not be able to pay him/ When you have got your 
bargain, you may, perhaps, think little of payment; 
but Creditors (Poor Richard tells us) have better 
memories than debtors; and in another place says, 
Creditors are a superstitious sect, great observers oj 
set days and times. The day comes round before you 
are aware, and the demand is made before you are 
prepared to satisfy it; or if you bear your debt in 
mind, the term which at first seemed so long, will, 

^ Imprisonment for debt was common then, and in England 
for long afterward. 



1 6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

as it lessens, appear extremely short. Time will 
seem to have added wings to his heels as well as his 
shoulders. Those have a short Lent, saith Poor 
Richard, who owe money to be paid at Easter, Then 
since, as he says. The borrower is a slave to the lender, 
and the debtor to the creditor, disdain the chain, pre- 
serve your freedom, and maintain your independency. 
Be industrious and free ; be frugal and free. At 
present, perhaps, you may think yourself in thriving 
circumstances, and that you can bear a Httle extrava- 
gance without injury; but, 

For age and want, save while you may, 
No morning sun lasts a whole day, 

as Poor Richard says. Gain may be temporary and 
uncertain; but ever, while you live, expense is con- 
stant and certain; and ^Tis easier to build two chim- 
neys than to keep one in fuel, as Poor Richard says; 
so, Rather go to bed supperless than rise in debt. 

Get what you can, and what you get hold; 

^Tis the stone that will turn all your lead into gold, 

as Poor Richard says. And when you have got the 
Philosopher's stone, sure you will no longer com- 
plain of bad times, or the difficulty of paying taxes. 

This doctrine, my friends, is reason and wisdom; 
but, after all, do not depend too much upon your 
own industry and frugality and prudence, though 
excellent things: for they may all be blasted without 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1 7 

the blessing of Heaven; and therefore, ask that 
blessing humbly, and be not uncharitable to those 
that at present seem to want it, but comfort and help 
them. Remember Job suffered, and was afterwards 
prosperous. 

And now, to conclude. Experience keeps a dear 
school, but fools will learn in no other, and scarce in 
that; for it is true. We may give advice, but we cannot 
give conduct, as Poor Richard says. However, re- 
member this. They that won't be counseled, canH be 
helped, as Poor Richard says: and farther, that, 
// you will not hear reason, shell surely rap your 
knuckles, 

Thus the old gentleman ended his harangue. 
The people heard it, and approved the doctrine, and 
immediately practised the contrary, just as if it had 
been a common sermon ; for the vendue opened, and 
they began to buy extravagantly, notwithstanding 
all his cautions, and their own fear of taxes. I found 
the good man had thoroughly studied my Almanacs, 
and digested all I had dropped on those topics during 
the course of five-and-twenty years. The frequent 
mention he made of me must have tired any one else; 
but my vanity was wonderfully delighted with it, 
though I was conscious that not a tenth part of the 
wisdom was my own which he ascribed to me, but 
rather the gleanings that I had made of the sense 
of all ages and nations. However, I resolved to be 



1 8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

the better for the echo of it; and, though I had at 
first determined to buy stuff for a new coat, I went 
away resolved to wear my old one a Uttle longer. 
Reader, if thou wilt do the same, thy profit will be 
as great as mine. 

I am as ever, 

Thine to serve thee, 

Richard Saunders. 
Jidy 7, 1757. 

THE WHISTLE! 

November 10, 1779. 

I RECEIVED my dear friend's two letters, one for 
Wednesday, one for Saturday. This is again Wednes- 
day. I do not deserve one for to-day, because I 
have not answered the former. But, indolent as I 
am, and averse to writing, the fear of having no more 
of your pleasing epistles if I do not contribute to the 
correspondence, obHges me to take up my pen; and 
as Mr. B. has kindly sent me word that he sets out 
to-morrow to see you, instead of spending this Wednes- 
day evening, as I have done its namesakes, in your 
deHghtful company, I sit down to spend it in think- 
ing of you, in writing to you, and in thinking over 
and over again your letters. 

I am charmed with your description of Paradise, 

^ A letter to Madame Brillon. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 1 9 

and with your plan of living there; and I approve 
much of your conclusion, that in the meantime we 
should draw all the good we can from this world. In 
my opinion, we might all draw more good from it 
than we do, and suffer less evils, if we would take 
care not to give too much for whistles. For to me 
it seems that most of the unhappy people we meet 
with are become so by neglect of that caution. 

You ask what I mean? You love stories, and will 
excuse my telling one of myself. 

When I was a child of seven years old, my friends 
on a holiday filled my pocket with coppers. I went 
directly to a shop where they sold toys for children: 
and, being charmed with the sound of a whistle that 
I met by the way in the hands of another boy, I vol- 
untarily offered and gave all my money for one. I 
then came home, and went whistling all over the 
house, much pleased with my whistle^ but disturbing 
all the family. My brothers and sisters and cousins, 
understanding the bargain I had made, told me I had 
given four times as much for it as it was worth; put 
me in mind what good things I might have bought 
with the rest of the money, and laughed at me so 
much for my folly, that I cried with vexation; and 
the reflection gave me more chagrin than the whistle 
gave me pleasure. 

This, however, was afterwards of use to me, the im- 
pression continuing on my mind, so that often, when I 
was tempted to buy some unnecessary thing, I said to 



20 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

myself, DonH give too much for the whistle: and I 
saved my money. 

As I grew up, came into the world, and observed 
the actions of men, I thought I met with many, very 
many, who gave too much for the whistle. 

When I saw one too ambitious to court favor, sac- 
rificing his time in attendance on levees, his repose, 
his liberty, his virtue, and perhaps his friends, to at- 
tain it, I have said to myself. This man gives too much 
for his whistle. 

When I saw another fond of popularity, constantly 
employing himself in political bustles, neglecting his 
own affairs and ruining them by that neglect. He 
pays, indeed, said I, too much for his whistle. 

If I knew a miser, who gave up any kind of a com- 
fortable living, all the pleasure of doing good to 
others, all the esteem of his fellow-citizens, and the 
joys of benevolent friendship, for the sake of accumu- ^ 
lating wealth. Poor man, said I, you pay too much 
for your whistle. 

When I met with a man of pleasure, sacrificing 
every laudable improvement of the mind, or of his 
fortune, to m.ere corporal sensations, and ruining his 
health in their pursuit. Mistaken man, said I, you are 
providing pain for yourself instead of pleasure; you 
give too much for your whistle. 

If I see one fond of appearance, or fine clothes, fine 
houses, fine furniture, fine equipages, all above his for- 
tune, for which he contracts debts, and ends his career 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 21 

in a prison, Alas! say I, he has paid dear, very dear, 
for his whistle. 

When I see a beautiful, sweet-tempered girl married 
to an ilL-natured brute of a husband, What a pity, 
say I, that she should pay so much for a whistle ! 

In short, I conceive that great part of the miseries 
of mankind are brought upon them by the false esti- 
mates they have made of the value of things, and by 
their giving too much for their whistles. 

Yet I ought to have charity for these unhappy 
people, when I consider, that with all this wisdom of 
which I am boasting, there are certain things in the 
world so tempting, for example, the apples of King 
John, which happily are not to be bought; for if they 
were put up to sale by auction, I might very easily be 
led to ruin myself in the purchase, and find that I had 
once more given too much for the whistle. 

Adieu, my dear friend, and believe me ever yours, 
very sincerely and with unalterable affection, 

B. Franklin. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

1757-1804 



Born on the West Indian island of Nevis, of Scottish- 
French ancestry, this remarkable youth at the age of fifteen en- 
tered King's College (now Columbia) in New York. Poetry, 
philosophy, history, commerce, finance, were his studies out- 
side regular courses. He was an ardent American patriot; 
published, when only seventeen, striking essays on the rights 
of the colonists; leaped into notice as a speaker arousing 
the people to arms, and at the age of nineteen (1776) joined 
the Revolutionary forces as a captain of artillery. 

At twenty-one he was on Washington's staff as confidential 
aid serving through the war, and attaining the rank of major- 
general. His diplomatic skill was of great value to his chief, 
and his bravery and military genius were notable. 

After the war Hamilton became a leading member of the 
New York bar, served in the State legislature, in Congress, and 
was an influential member of the Constitutional Convention 
of 1787. Whether as writer, orator, or counselor, he shone a 
star of the first magnitude. His greatest fame has a twofold 
radiance. With Madison and Jay, he was joint author of the 
renowned essays in favor of the new Constitution, known as 
''The Federalist," which probably more than anything else 
influenced its adoption, Hamilton writing the largest pro- 
portion of the separate papers. From those unquestionably 
Hamilton's two are here presented. 

After Washington became President, Hamilton was the first 
Secretary of the Treasury, and here won his other greatest 
fame, as the finance minister who brought order out of chaos 
with his masterly plans. Webster said of him : "He smote the 
rock of the national resources, and abundant streams of reve- 
nue gushed forth. He touched the dead corpse of the Public 
Credit, and it sprung upon its feet." 

Hamilton's disagreements with Burr resulted in a foolish 
duel, in which this great genius passed away at the early age of 
forty-eight and at the height of his splendid career. 



24 



DEFECTS OF THE ORIGINAL CON- 
FEDERATION 

From " The Federalist." No. XXII 

To the People of the State of New York: 

In addition to the defects already enumerated in 
the existing federal system, there are others of not 
less importance, which concur in rendering it alto- 
gether unfit for the administration of the affairs of 
the Union. 

The want of a power to regulate commerce is by 
all parties allowed to be of the number. The utility 
of such a power has been anticipated under the first 
head of our inquiries; and for this reason, as well as 
from the universal conviction entertained upon the 
subject, little need be added in this place. It is 
indeed evident, on the most superficial view, that 
there is no object, either as it respects the interests 
of trade or finance, that more strongly demands 
a federal superintendence. The want of it has al- 
ready operated as a bar to the formation of beneficial 
treaties with foreign powers, and has given occasions 
of dissatisfaction between the States. No nation 
acquainted with the nature of our political associa- 
tion would be unwise enough to enter into stipula- 

25 



26 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tions with the United States, by which they conceded 
privileges of any importance to them, while they 
were apprised that the engagements on the part of 
the Union might at any moment be violated by its 
members, and while they found from experience that 
they might enjoy every advantage they desired in our 
markets, without granting us any return but such as 
their momentary convenience might suggest. It is 
not, therefore, to be wondered at that Mr. Jenkinson, 
in ushering into the House of Commons a bill for 
regulating the temporary intercourse between the 
two countries, should preface its introduction by a 
declaration that similar provisions in former bills 
had been found to answer every purpose to the com- 
merce of Great Britain, and that it would be prudent 
to persist in the plan until it should appear whether 
the American government was Ukely or not to acquire 
greater consistency.^ 

Several States have endeavored, by separate pro- 
hibitions, restrictions, and exclusions, to influence 
the conduct of that kingdom in this particular, but 
the want of concert, arising from the want of a gen- 
eral authority and from clashing and dissimilar views 
in the State, has hitherto frustrated every experi- 
ment of the kind, and will continue to do so as long 
as the same obstacles to a uniformity of measures 
continue to exist. 

^ This, as nearly as I can recollect, was the sense of his 
speech on introducing the last bill. — Publius. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 27 

The interfering and unneighborly regulations of 
some States, contrary to the true spirit of the Union, 
have, in different instances, given just cause of um- 
brage and complaint to others, and it is to be feared 
that examples of this nature, if not restrained by a 
national control, would be multiplied and extended 
till they became not less serious sources of animosity 
and discord than injurious impediments to the inter- 
course between the different parts of the Confed- 
eracy. ^^The commerce of the German empire * is in 
continual trammels from the multiplicity of the 
duties which the several princes and states exact 
upon the merchandises passing through their terri- 
tories, by means of which the fine streams and navi- 
gable rivers with which Germany is so happily 
watered are rendered almost useless.'' Though the 
genius of the people of this country might never per- 
mit this description to be strictly applicable to us, 
yet we may reasonably expect, from the gradual con- 
flicts of State regulations, that the citizens of each 
would at length come to be considered and treated 
by the others in no better light than that of foreign- 
ers and aliens. 

The power of raising armies, by the most obvious 
construction of the articles of the Confederation, is 
merely a power of making requisitions upon the States 
for quotas of men. This practice, in the course of 
the late war, was found replete with obstructions to 

^ Encyclopaedia, article ''Empire." — Publius. 



28 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

a vigorous and to an economical system of defense. 
It gave birth to a competition between the States 
which created a kind of auction for men. In order 
to furnish the quotas required of them, they outbid 
each other till bounties grew to an enormous and in- 
supportable size. The hope of a still further increase 
afforded an inducement to those who were disposed 
to serve to procrastinate their enhstment, and dis- 
inclined them from engaging for any considerable 
periods. Hence, slow and scanty levies of men, 
in the most critical emergencies of our affairs; short 
enlistments at an unparalleled expense; continual 
fluctuations in the troops, ruinous to their discipline 
and subjecting the public safety frequently to the per- 
ilous crisis of a disbanded army. Hence, also, those 
oppressive expedients for raising men which were 
upon several occasions practiced, and which nothing 
but the enthusiasm of liberty would have induced the 
people to endure. 

This method of raising troops is not more unfriendly 
to economy and vigor than it is to an equal distribu- 
tion of the burden. The States near the seat of war, 
influenced by motives of self-preservation, made 
efforts to furnish their quotas, which even exceeded 
their abilities; while those at a distance from danger 
were, for the most part, as remiss as the others were 
diligent in their exertions. The immediate pressure 
of this inequality was not in this case, as in that of 
the contributions of money, alleviated by the hope of 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 29 

a final liquidation. The States which did not pay 
their proportions of money might at least be charged 
with their deficiencies; but no account could be 
formed of the deficiencies in the suppHes of men. 
We shall not, however, see much reason to regret 
the want of this hope, when we consider how little 
prospect there is, that the most delinquent States 
will ever be able to make compensation for their 
pecuniary failures. The system of quotas and 
requisitions, whether it be applied to men or money, 
is, in every view, a system of imbecility in the Union, 
and of inequality and injustice among the members. 
The right of equal suffrage among the States is 
another exceptionable part of the Confederation. 
Every idea of proportion and every rule of fair rep- 
resentation conspire to condemn a principle, which 
gives to Rhode Island an equal weight in the scale 
of power with Massachusetts, or Connecticut, or 
New York; and to Delaware an equal voice in the 
national deliberations with Pennsylvania, or Vir- 
ginia, or North Carolina. Its operation contradicts 
the fundamental maxim of republican government, 
which requires that the sense of the majority should 
prevail. Sophistry may reply, that sovereigns are 
equal, and that a majority of the votes of the States 
will be a majority of confederated America. But 
this kind of logical legerdemain will never counter- 
act the plain suggestions of justice and common 
sense. It may happen that this majority of States 



30 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

is a small minority of the people of America; ^ and 
two-thirds of the people of America could not long 
be persuaded, upon the credit of artificial distinc- 
tions and syllogistic subtleties, to submit their 
interests to the management and disposal of one- 
third. The larger States would after a while revolt 
from the idea of receiving the law from the smaller. 
To acquiesce in such a privation of their due impor- 
tance in the poHtical scale, would be not merely to 
be insensible to the love of power, but even to sacri- 
fice the desire of equaUty. It is neither rational to 
expect the first, nor just to require the last. The 
smaller States, considering how peculiarly their 
safety and welfare depend on union, ought readily 
to renounce a pretension which, if not reUnquished, 
would prove fatal to its duration. 

It may be objected to this, that not seven but 
nine States, or two-thirds of the whole number, must 
consent to the most important resolutions; and it 
may be thence inferred, that nine States would 
always comprehend a majority of the Union. But 
this does not obviate the impropriety of an equal 
vote between States of the most unequal dimensions 
and populousness; nor is the inference accurate in 
point of fact; for we can enumerate nine States which 

^ New Hampshire, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Delaware, 
Georgia, South Carolina, and Maryland are a majority of 
the whole number of the States, but they do not contain one- 
third of the people. — Publius. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 3 1 

contain less than a majority of the people; ^ and it is 
constitutionally possible that these nine may give 
the vote. Besides, there are matters of considerable 
moment determinable by a bare majority; and there 
are others concerning which doubts have been enter- 
tained, which, if interpreted in favor of the suffi- 
ciency of a vote of seven States, would extend its 
operation to interests of the first magnitude. In 
addition to this, it is to be observed that there is a 
probability of an increase in the nimiber of States, 
and no provision for a proportional augmentation of 
the ratio of votes. 

But this is not all; what at first sight may seem 
a remedy, is, in reality, a poison. To give a minor- 
ity a negative upon the majority (which is always the 
case where more than a majority is requisite to a 
decision), is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of 
the greater number to that of the lesser. Congress, 
from the non-attendance of a few States, have been 
frequently in the situation of a Polish diet, where a 
single VOTE has been sufficient to put a stop to all 
their movements. A sixtieth part of the Union, 
which is about the proportion of Delaware and Rhode 
Island, has several times been able to oppose an en- 
tire bar to its operations. This is one of those refine- 
ments which, in practice, has an effect the reverse 
of what is expected from it in theory. The neces- 

^ Add New York and Connecticut to the foregoing seven, 
^nd they will be less than a majority, — Pubuus. 



32 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

sity of unanimity in public bodies, or of something 
approaching towards it, has been founded upon a 
supposition that it would contribute to security. But 
its real operation is to embarrass the administra- 
tion, to destroy the energy of the government, and 
to substitute the pleasure, caprice, or artifices of an 
insignificant, turbulent, or corrupt junto, to the regu- 
lar deliberations and decisions of a respectable ma- 
jority. In those emergencies of a nation, in which 
the goodness or badness, the weakness or strength of 
its government, is of the greatest importance, there 
is commonly a necessity for action. The public 
business must, in some way or other, go forward. 
If a pertinacious minority can control the opinion 
of a majority, respecting the best mode of conduct- 
ing it, the majority, in order that something may be 
done, must conform to the views of the minority; 
and thus the sense of the smaller number will overrule 
that of the greater, and give a tone to the national 
proceedings. Hence, tedious delays; continual ne- 
gotiation and intrigue; contemptible compromises of 
the public good. And yet, in such a system, it is 
even happy when such compromises can take place: 
for upon some occasions things will not admit of 
accommodation; and then the measures of govern- 
ment must be injuriously suspended, or fatally 
defeated. It is often, by the impracticability of ob- 
taining the concurrence of the necessary number of 
votes, kept in a state of inaction. Its situation must 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 33 

always savor of weakness, sometimes border upon 
anarchy. 

It is not difficult to discover, that a principle of 
this kind gives greater scope to foreign corruption, 
as well as to domestic faction, than that which per- 
mits the sense of the majority t?o decide; though the 
contrary of this has been presumed. The mistake 
has proceeded from not attending with due care to 
the mischiefs that may be occasioned by obstructing 
the progress of government at certain critical seasons. 
When the concurrence of a large number is required 
by the Constitution to the doing of any national act, 
we are apt to rest satisfied that all is safe, because 
nothing improper will be likely to he done; but we 
forget how much good may be prevented, and how 
much ill may be produced, by the power of hindering 
the doing what may be necessary, and of keeping 
affairs in the same unfavorable posture in which they 
may happen to stand at particular periods. 

Suppose, for instance, we were engaged in a war, 
in conjunction with one foreign nation, against an- 
other. Suppose the necessity of our situation de- 
manded peace, and the interest or ambition of our 
ally led him to seek the prosecution of the war, 
with views that might justify us in making separate 
terms. In such a state of things, this ally of ours 
would evidently find it much easier, by his bribes 
and intrigues, to tie up the hands of government 
from making peace, where two-thirds of all the votes 



34 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

were requisite to that object, than where a simple 
majority would suffice. In the first case, he would 
have to corrupt a smaller number; in the last, a 
greater number. Upon the same principle, it would 
be much easier for a foreign power with which we 
were at war to perplex our councils and embarrass 
our exertions. And, in a commercial view, we may 
be subjected to similar inconveniences. A nation, 
with which we might have a treaty of commerce, 
could with much greater facility prevent our forming 
a connection with her competitor in trade, though 
such a connection should be ever so beneficial to 
ourselves. 

Evils of this description ought not to be regarded 
as imaginary. One of the weak sides of republics, 
among their numerous advantages, is that they afford 
too easy an inlet to foreign corruption. An hered- 
itary monarch, though often disposed to sacrifice 
his subjects to his ambition, has so great a personal 
interest in the government and in the external glory 
of the nation, that it is not easy for a foreign power 
to give him an equivalent for what he would sacrifice 
by treachery to the state. The world has accord- 
ingly been witness to few examples of this species 
of royal prostitution, though there have been abun- 
dant specimens of every other kind. 

In republics, persons elevated from the mass of the 
community, by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens, 
to stations of great preeminence and power, may find 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 35 

compensations for betraying their trust, which, to 
any but minds animated and guided by superior 
virtue, may appear to exceed the proportion of in- 
terest they have in the common stock, and to over- 
balance the obhgations of duty. Hence it is that 
history furnishes us with so many mortifying ex- 
amples of the prevalency of foreign corruption in 
republican governments. How much this contrib- 
uted to the ruin of the ancient commonwealths has 
been already delineated. It is well known that the 
deputies of the United Provinces have, in various 
instances, been purchased by the emissaries of the 
neighboring kingdoms. The Earl of Chesterfield (if 
my memory serves me right), in a letter to his court, 
intimates that his success in an important negotia- 
tion must depend on his obtaining a major's com- 
mission for one of those deputies. And in Sweden 
the parties were alternately bought by France and 
England in so barefaced and notorious a manner that 
it excited universal disgust in the nation, and was 
a principal cause that the most limited monarch in 
Europe, in a single day, without tumult, violence, or 
opposition, became one of the most absolute and 
uncontrolled. 

A circumstance which crowns the defects of the 
Confederation remains yet to be mentioned, — the 
want of a judiciary power. Laws are a dead letter 
without courts to expound and define their true mean- 
ing and operation. The treaties of the United States, 



36 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

to have any force at all, must be considered as part 
of the law of the land. Their true import, as far as 
respects individuals, must, like all other laws, be as- 
certained by judicial determinations. To produce 
uniformity in these determinations, they ought to 
be submitted, in the last resort, to one supreme 
TRIBUNAL. And this tribunal ought to be instituted 
under the same authority which forms the treaties 
themselves. These ingredients are both indispen- 
sable. If there is in each State a court of final juris- 
diction, there may be as many different final deter- 
minations on the same point as there are courts. 
There are endless diversities in the opinions of men. 
We often see not only different courts but the judges 
of the same court differing from each other. To 
avoid the confusion which would unavoidably result 
from the contradictory decisions of a number of 
independent judicatories, all nations have found it 
necessary to establish one court paramount to the 
rest, possessing a general superintendence, and au- 
thorized to settle and declare in the last resort a 
uniform rule of civil justice. 

This is the more necessary w^here the frame of the 
government is so compounded that the laws of the 
whole are in danger of being contravened by the laws 
of the parts. In this case, if the particular tribunals 
are invested with a right of ultimate jurisdiction, 
besides the contradictions to be expected from dif- 
ference of opinion, there will be much to fear from 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 37 

the bias of local views and prejudices, and from the 
interference of local regulations. As often as such 
an interference was to happen, there would be reason 
to apprehend that the provisions of the particular 
laws might be preferred to those of the general laws; 
for nothing is more natural to men in office than to 
look with peculiar deference towards that authority 
to which they owe their" official existence. The 
treaties of the United States, under the present 
Constitution, are liable to the infractions of thirteen 
different legislatures, and as many different courts 
of final jurisdiction, acting under the authority of 
those legislatures. The faith, the reputation, the 
peace of the whole Union, are thus continually at 
the mercy of the prejudices, the passions, and the 
interests of every member of which it is composed. 
Is it possible that foreign nations can either respect 
or confide in such a government? Is it possible that 
the people of America will longer consent to trust 
their honor, their happiness, their safety, on so 
precarious a foundation? 

In this review of the Confederation, I have confined 
myself to the exhibition of its most material defects; 
passing over those imperfections in its details by 
which even a great part of the power intended to be 
conferred upon it has been in a great measure ren- 
dered abortive. It must be by this time evident to 
all men of reflection, who can divest themselves of the 
prepossessions of preconceived opinions, that it is a 



38 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

system so radically vicious and unsound, as to admit 
not of amendment but by an entire change in its 
leading features and characters. 

The organization of Congress is itself utterly im- 
proper for the exercise of those powers which are 
necessary to be deposited in the Union. A single 
assembly may be a proper receptacle of those slender, 
or rather fettered, authorities, which have been here- 
tofore delegated to the federal head; but it would 
be inconsistent with all the principles of good govern- 
ment, to intrust it with those additional powers 
which, even the moderate and more rational adver- 
saries of the proposed Constitution admit, ought to 
reside in the United States. If that plan should not 
be adopted, and if the necessity of the Union should 
be able to withstand the ambitious aims of those 
men who may indulge magnificent schemes of per- 
sonal aggrandizement from its dissolution, the prob- 
abiUty would be, that we should run into the project 
of conferring supplementary powers upon Congress, 
as they are now constituted; and either the machine, 
from the intrinsic feebleness of its structure, will 
molder into pieces, in spite of our ill-judged efforts 
to prop it; or, by successive augmentations of its 
force and energy, as necessity might prompt, we 
shall finally accumulate, in a single body, all the most 
important prerogatives of sovereignty, and thus en- 
tail upon our posterity one of the most execrable 
forms of government that human infatuation ever 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 39 

contrived. Thus we should create in reahty that 
very tyranny which the adversaries of the new Con- 
stitution either are, or affect to be, soHcitous to avert. 
It has not a little contributed to the infirmities of 
the existing federal system, that it never had a ratifi- 
cation by the people. Resting on no better foun- 
dation than the consent of the several legislatures, 
it has been exposed to frequent and intricate ques- 
tions concerning the validity of its powers, and has, 
in some instances, given birth to the enormous 
doctrine of a right of legislative repeal. Owing its 
ratification to the law of a State, it has been con- 
tended that the same authority might repeal the 
law by which it was ratified. However gross a heresy 
it may be to maintain that a party to a compact 
has a right to revoke that compact, the doctrine itself 
has had respectable advocates. The possibility of a 
question of this nature proves the necessity of laying 
the foundations of our national government deeper 
than in the mere sanction of delegated authority. 
The fabric of American empite ought to rest on the 
soUd basis of the consent of the people. The 
streams of national power ought to flow imme- 
diately from that pure, original fountain of all legiti- 
mate authority. 

PUBLIUS. 



40 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



OBJECTS AND POWERS OF A 
FEDERAL UNION 

From '' The Federalist. " No. XXIII 

To the People of the State of New York: 

The necessity of a Constitution, at least equally 
energetic with the one proposed, to the preservation 
of the Union, is the point at the examination of which 
we are now arrived. 

This inquiry will naturally divide itself into three 
branches — the objects to be provided for by the 
federal government, the quantity of power neces- 
sary to the accompUshment of those .objects, the 
persons upon whom that power ought to operate. 
Its distribution and organization will more properly 
claim our attention under the succeeding head. 

The principal purposes to be answered by union 
are these — the common defense of the members; 
the preservation of the public peace, as well against 
internal convulsions as external attacks; the regu- 
lation of commerce with other nations and between 
the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, 
political and commercial, with foreign countries. 

The authorities essential to the common defense 
are these: to raise armies; to build and equip fleets; 
to prescribe rules for the government of both; to 
direct their operations; to provide for their support. 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 41 

These powers ought to exist without limitation, 
because it is impossible to foresee or define the extent 
and variety of national exigencies, or the correspondent 
extent and variety of the means which may be necessary 
to satisfy them. The circumstances that endanger 
the safety of nations are infinite, and for this reason 
no constitutional shackles can wisely be imposed 
on the power to which the care of it is committed. 
This power ought to be coextensive with all the 
possible combinations of such circumstances; and 
ought to be under the direction of the same councils 
which are appointed to preside over the common 
defense. 

This one of those truths which, to a correct and 
unprejudiced mind, carries its own evidence along 
with it; and may be obscured, but cannot be made 
plainer by argument or reasoning. It rests upon 
axioms as simple as they are universal; the means 
ought to be proportioned to the end; the persons, 
from whose agency the attainment of any end is 
expected, ought to possess the means by which it is 
to be attained. 

Whether there ought to be a federal government 
intrusted with the care of the common defense, is a 
question in the first instance open for discussion; 
but the moment it is decided in the affirmative, it 
will follow, that that government ought to be clothed 
with all the powers requisite to complete execution 
of its trust. And unless it can be shown that the cir- 



42 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

cumstances which may affect the pubUc safety are 
reducible within certain determinate Umits, imless 
the contrary of this position can be fairly and ration- 
ally disputed, it must be admitted, as a necessary 
consequence, that there can be no limitation of that 
authority which is to provide for the defense and 
protection of the community, in any matter essential 
to its efficacy — that is, in any matter essential to 
the formation, direction, or support of the national 

FORCES. 

Defective as the present Confederation has been 
proved to be, this principle appears to have been 
fully recognized by the framers of it; though they 
have not made proper or adequate provision for its 
exercise. Congress have an unlimited discretion to 
make requisitions of men and money; to govern the 
army and navy; to direct their operations. As their 
requisitions are made constitutionally binding upon 
the States, who are in fact under the most solemn 
obligations to furnish the supplies required of them, 
the intention evidently was, that the United States 
should command whatever resources were by them 
judged requisite to the *^ common defense and gen- 
eral welfare." It was presumed that a sense of their 
true interests, and a regard to the dictates of good 
faith, would be found sufficient pledges for the 
punctual performance of the duty of the members 
to the federal head. 

The experiment has, however, demonstrated that 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 43 

this expectation was ill-founded and illusory; and 
the observations, made under the last head, will, 
I imagine, have sufficed to convince the impartial 
and discerning, that there is an absolute necessity 
for an entire change in the first principles of the 
system; that if we are in earnest about giving the 
Union energy and duration, we must abandon the 
vain project of legislating upon the States in their 
collective capacities; we must extend the laws of the 
federal government to the individual citizens of 
America; we must discard the fallacious scheme of 
quotas and requisitions, as equally impracticable 
and unjust. The result from all this is that the 
Union ought to be invested with full power to levy 
troops; to build and equip fleets; and to raise the 
revenues which will be required for the formation 
and support of an army and navy, in the customary 
and ordinary modes practiced in other governments. 
If the circumstances of our country are such as to 
demand a compound instead of a simple, a confed- 
erate instead of a sole, government, the essential 
point which will remain to be adjusted will be to 
discriminate the objects, as far as it can be done, 
which shall appertain to the different provinces or 
departments of power; allowing to each the most 
ample authority for fulfilling the Objects committed 
to its charge. Shall the Union be constituted the 
guardian of the common safety? Are fleets and ar- 
mies and revenues necessary to this purpose? The 



44 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

government of the Union must be empowered to 
pass all laws, and to make all regulations which have 
relation to them. The same must be the case in re- 
spect to commerce, and to every other matter to 
which its jurisdiction is permitted to extend. Is the 
administration of justice between the citizens of the 
same State the proper department of the local gov- 
ernments? These must possess all the authorities 
which are connected with this object, and with every 
other that may be allotted to their particular cog- 
nizance and direction. Not to confer in each case 
a degree of power commensurate to the end, would 
be to violate the most obvious rules of prudence and 
propriety, and improvidently to trust the great 
interests of the nation to hands which are disabled 
from managing them with vigor and success. 

Who so likely to make suitable provisions for the 
public defense, as that body to which the guardian- 
ship of the public safety is confided; which, as the 
center of information, will best understand the extent 
and urgency of the dangers that threaten; as the 
representative of the whole, will feel itself most 
deeply interested in the preservation of every part; 
which, from the responsibility implied in the duty 
assigned to it, wall be most sensibly impressed with 
the necessity of proper exertions; and which, by the 
extension of its authority throughout the States, can 
alone establish" uniformity and concert in the plans 
and measures by which the common safety is to be 



ALEXANDER HAMILTON 45 

secured? Is there not a manifest inconsistency in 
devolving upon the federal government the care of 
the general defense, and leaving in the State govern- 
ments the effective powers by which it is to be provided 
for? Is not a want of cooperation the infallible 
consequence of such a system? And will not weak- 
ness, disorder, an undue distribution of the burdens 
and calamities of war, an unnecessary and intolerable 
increase of expense, be its natural and inevitable 
concomitants? Have we not had unequivocal ex- 
perience of its effects in the course of the revolution 
which we have just accomplished ? 

Every view we may take of the subject, as candid 
inquirers after truth, will serve to convince us, that 
it is both unwise and dangerous to deny the federal 
government an unconfined authority, as to all those 
objects which are intrusted to its management. 
It will indeed deserve the most vigilant and careful 
attention of the people, to see that it be modeled in 
such a manner as to admit of its being safely vested 
with the requisite powers. If any pl'an which has 
been, or may be, offered to our consideration, should 
not, upon a dispassionate inspection, be found to 
answer this description, it ought to be rejected. A 
government, the constitution of which renders it 
unfit to be trusted with all the powers which a free 
people ought to delegate to any government, would be 
an unsafe and improper depositary of the national 
INTERESTS. Wherever these can with propriety 



46 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

be confided, the coincident powers may safely ac- 
company them. This is the true result of all just 
reasoning upon the subject. . . . For the absurdity 
must continually stare us in the face of confiding 
to a government the direction of the most essential 
national interests, without daring to trust to it the 
authorities which are indispensable to their proper 
and efficient management. Let us not attempt to 
reconcile contradictions, but firmly embrace a 
rational alternative. 

I trust, however, that the impracticability of one 
general system cannot be shown. I am greatly mis- 
taken, if anything of weight has yet been advanced 
of this tendency; and I flatter myself, that the ob- 
servations which have been made in the course of 
these papers have served to place the reverse of that 
position in as clear a light as any matter still in the 
womb of time and experience can be susceptible of. 
This, at all events, must be evident, that the very 
difiiculty itself, drawn from the extent of the coun- 
try, is the strongest argument in favor of an energetic 
government; for any other can certainly never 
preserve the Union of so large an empire. If we 
embrace the tenets of those who oppose the adoption 
of the proposed Constitution, as the standard of our 
political creed, we cannot fail to verify the gloomy 
doctrines which predict the impracticability of a 
national system pervading the entire limits of the 
present Confederacy. 

PUBLIUS. 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 

I 780-1842 



Of New England birth and training, a grandson of William 
Ellery, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, a 
graduate of Harvard, and for many years a distinguished Uni- 
tarian pastor in Boston, Dr. C banning was one of the earhest 
of the essentially literary men of America. Calm, serene, 
philosophical, poetic, of loftiest spirituality and just discrimina- 
tion in many realms of thought, he was distinctly an essayist, 
although in the pulpit a fervid preacher. It was his sermon at 
the ordination of the Rev. Jared Sparks in Baltimore, in 1819, 
that made him the acknowledged head of the Unitarian separa- 
tion from the Congregational churches, that had taken place in 
181 2. His passion for freedom was intense. Whether as to 
the negro, or woman, or religious thinking, or political economy, 
or literary traditions, or any domain where he saw fetters on 
body, mind, or spirit, he was roused to protest and plea for 
enlargement. 

Dr. Channing's writings were received with marked respect, 
both here and in England. All things akin to man's highest 
interests were his themes. Among his best -known essays were 
those on Self-culture, on Milton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Fenelon, 
and an appeal for a National American Literature, freed from 
the trammels of European influence in form and spirit. Of this 
last (originally an Oration before the American Philosophical 
Society, in Philadelphia, October j8, 1823) i^ ^^^^ given the 
first part, arguing the importance and value of such a litera- 
ture; the rest of the paper discusses methods for securing it, 
— good counsels, but now happily no longer needed. 



48 



REMARKS ON NATIONAL 
LITERATURE 

We begin with stating what we mean by national 
Uterature. We mean the expression of a nation's 
mind in writing. We mean the production among a 
people of important works in philosophy, and in the 
departments of imagination and taste. We mean the 
contributions of new truths to the stock of human 
knowledge. We mean the thoughts of profound and 
original minds, elaborated by the toil of composition, 
and fixed and made immortal in books. We mean the 
manifestation of a nation's intellect in the only forms 
by which it can multiply itself at home, and send itself 
abroad. We mean that a nation shall take a place, 
by its authors, among the hghts of the world. It 
will be seen that we include under literature all the 
writings of superior minds, be the subjects what 
they may. We are aware that the term is often con- 
fined to compositions which relate to human nature 
and human life; that it is not generally extended to 
physical science; that mind, not matter, is regarded 
as its main subject and sphere. But the worlds of 
matter and mind are too intimately connected to 
admit of exact partition. All the objects of human 
thought flow into one another. Moral and physical 

49 



50 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

truths have many bonds and analogies, and, whilst 
the former are the chosen and noblest themes of 
literature, we are not anxious to divorce them from 
the latter, or to shut them up in a separate depart- 
ment. The expression of superior mind in writing 
we regard, then, as a nation's literature. We regard 
its gifted men, whether devoted to the exact sciences, 
to mental and ethical philosophy, to history and 
legislation, or to fiction and poetry, as forming a noble 
intellectual brotherhood; and it is for the purpose 
of quickening all to join their labors for the pubUc 
good that we offer the present plea in behalf of a 
national literature. 

To show the importance which we attach to the 
subject, we begin with some remarks on what we 
deem the distinction which a nation should most 
earnestly covet. We believe that more distinct 
apprehensions on this point are needed, and that, for 
want of them, the work of improvement is carried 
on with less energy, consistency, and wisdom, than 
may and should be brought to bear upon it. The 
great distinction of a country, then, is, that it pro- 
duces superior men. Its natural advantages are not 
to be disdained. But they are of secondary impor- 
tance. No matter what races of animals a country 
breeds, the great question is, Does it breed a noble 
race of men ? No matter what its soil may be, the 
great question is. How far is it proUfic of moral and 
intellectual power ? No matter how stern its climate 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 51 

is, if it nourish force of thought and virtuous purpose. 
These are the products by which a country is to be 
tried, and institutions have value only by the impulse 
which they give to the mind. It has sometimes 
been said that the noblest men grow where nothing 
else will grow. This we do not believe, for mind is 
not the creature of climate or soil. But were it 
true, we should say that it were better to live among 
rocks and sands than in the most genial and pro- 
ductive region on the face of the earth. 

As yet, the great distinction of a nation on which 
we have insisted has been scarcely recognized. The 
idea of forming a superior race of men has entered 
little into schemes of policy. Invention and effort 
have been expended on matter much more than on 
mind. Lofty piles have been reared; the earth has 
groaned under pyramids and palaces. The thought 
of building up a nobler order of intellect and char- 
acter has hardly crossed the most adventurous states- 
man. We beg that we may not be misapprehended. 
We offer these remarks to correct what we deem a 
disproportioned attention to physical good, and not 
at all to condemn the expenditure of ingenuity and 
strength on the outward world. There is a har- 
mony between all our great interests, between inward 
and outward improvements; and by estabUshing 
among them a wise order, all will be secured. We 
have no desire to shut up man in his own spiritual 
nature. The mind was made to act on matter, and 



52 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

it grows by expressing itself in material forms. We 
believe, too, that in proportion as it shall gain intel- 
lectual and moral power, it will exert itself with 
increased energy and delight on the outward crea- 
tion; will pour itself forth more freely in useful 
and ornamental arts; will rear more magnificent 
structures, and will call forth new beauties in nature. 
An intelUgent and resolute spirit in a community 
perpetually extends its triumphs over matter. It 
can even subject to itself the most unpromising 
region. Holland, diked from the ocean, — Venice, 
rising amidst the waves, — and New England, 
bleak and rock-bound New England, converted by 
a few generations from a wilderness into smiling 
fields and opulent cities, — point us to the mind as 
the great source of physical good, and teach us 
that, in making the culture of man our highest end, 
we shall not retard but advance the cultivation of 
nature. 

The question which we most solicitously ask 
about this country is, what race of men it is likely 
to produce. We consider its Hberty of value only as 
far as it favors the growth of men. What is liberty ? 
The removal of restraint from human powers. Its 
benefit is, that it opens new fields for action and a 
wider range for the mind. The only freedom worth 
possessing is that which gives enlargement to a 
people's energy, intellect, and virtues. The savage 
makes his boast of freedom. But what is its worth ? 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHAINING 



S3 



Free as he is, he continues for ages in the same 
ignorance, leads the same comfortless life, sees the 
same untamed wilderness spread around him. He is 
indeed free from what he calls the yoke of civil insti- 
tutions. But other and worse chains bind him. 
The very privation of civil government is in effect 
a chain; for, by withholding protection from prop- 
erty, it virtually shackles the arm of industry, and 
forbids exertion for the melioration of his lot. Prog- 
ress, the growth of power, is the end and boon of 
liberty; and, without this, a people may have the 
name, but want the substance and spirit of free- 
dom. . . . 

These views will explain the vast importance which 
we attach to a national literature. By this, as we 
have said, we understand the expression of a nation's 
mind in writing. It is the action of the most gifted 
understandings on the community. It throws into 
circulation through a wide sphere the most quicken- 
ing and beautiful thoughts which have grown up 
in men of laborious study or creative genius. It is 
a much higher work than the communication of a 
gifted intellect in discourse. It is the mind giving to 
multitudes, whom no voice can reach, its compressed 
and selected thoughts in the most lucid order and 
attractive forms which it is capable of inventing. In 
other words, literature is the concentration of intel- 
lect for the purpose of spreading itself abroad and 
multiplying its energy. 



54 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



Such being the nature of Uterature, it is plainly 
among the most powerful methods of exalting the 
character of a nation, of forming a better race of men ; 
in truth, we apprehend that it may claim the first 
rank among the means of improvement. We know 
nothing so fitted to the advancement of society as to 
bring its higher minds to bear upon the multitude; 
as to establish close connections between the more 
or less gifted; as to spread far and wide the light 
which springs up in meditative, profound, and 
sublime understandings. It is the ordinance of God, 
and one of his most benevolent laws, that the human 
race should be carried forward by impulses which 
originate in a few minds, perhaps in an individual; 
and in this way the most interesting relations and 
dependencies of Ufe are framed. When a great truth 
is to be revealed, it does not flash at once on the race, 
but dawns and brightens on a superior understanding, 
from which it is to emanate and to illumine future 
ages. On the faithfulness of great minds to this 
awful function, the progress and happiness of men 
chiefly depend. The most illustrious benefactors 
of the race have been men .who, having risen to great 
truths, have held them as a sacred trust for their kind, 
and have borne witness to them amid general dark- 
ness, under scorn and persecution, perhaps in the 
face of death. Such men, indeed, have not always 
made contributions to literature, for their condition 
has not allowed them to be authors; but we owe 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 55 

the transmission, perpetuity, and immortal power 
of their new and high thoughts to kindred spirits, 
which have concentrated and fixed them in books. 

The quickening influences of Kterature need not 
be urged on those who are famiUar with the history 
of modern Europe, and who of course know the 
spring given to the human mind by the revival of 
ancient learning. Through their writings, the great 
men of antiquity have exercised a sovereignty over 
these later ages not enjoyed in their own. It is 
more important to observe that the influence of lit- 
erature is perpetually increasing; for, through the 
press and the spread of education, its sphere is in- 
definitely enlarged. Reading, once the privilege of 
a few, is now the occupation of multitudes, and is to 
become one of the chief gratifications of all. Books 
penetrate everywhere, and some of the works of gen- 
ius find their way to obscure dwellings which, a 
little while ago, seemed barred against all intellectual 
light. Writing is now the mightiest instrument on 
earth. Through this the mind has acquired a kind of 
omnipresence. To literature we then look, as the 
chief means of forming a better race of human beings. 
To superior minds, which may act through this, we 
look for the impulses by which their country is to be 
carried forward. We would teach them that they 
are the depositaries of the highest power on earth, 
and that on them the best hopes of society rest. 

We are aware that some may think that we are 



56 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

exalting intellectual above moral and religious influ- 
ence. They may tell us that the teaching of moral 
and religious truth, not by philosophers and boasters 
of wisdom, but by the comparatively weak and fool- 
ish, is the great means of renovating the world. This 
truth we indeed regard as 'Hhe power of God unto 
salvation.'^ But let none imagine that its chosen 
temple is an uncultivated mind, and that it selects, 
as its chief organs, the lips of the unlearned. Reli- 
gious and moral truth is indeed appointed to carry 
forward mankind; but not as conceived and ex- 
pounded by narrow minds, not as darkened by the 
ignorant, not as debased by the superstitious, not as 
subtihzed by the visionary, not as thundered out by 
the intolerant fanatic, not as turned into a driveling 
cant by the hypocrite. Like all other truths, it 
requires for its full reception and powerful communi- 
cation a free and vigorous intellect. Indeed, its 
grandeur and infinite connections demand a more 
earnest and various use of our faculties than any other 
subject. . . . Religion has been wronged by noth- 
ing more than by being separated from intellect; 
than by being removed from the province of reason 
and free research into that of mystery and authority, 
of impulse and feeling. Hence it is that the prevalent 
forms of exhibitions of Christianity are compara- 
tively inert, and that most which is written on the 
subject is of little or no worth. Christianity was 
given, not to contradict and degrade the rational 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 57 

nature, but to call it forth, to enlarge its range and its 
powers. It admits of endless development. It is 
the last truth which should remain stationary. 
It ought to be so explored and so expressed as to 
take the highest place in a nation's literature, as 
to exalt and purify all other literature. From these 
remarks it will be seen that the efficacy which we 
have ascribed to literary or intellectual influence in 
the work of human improvement is consistent with 
the supreme importance of moral and religious 
truth. 

If we have succeeded in conveying the impressions 
which we have aimed to make, our readers are now 
prepared to inquire with interest into the condition 
and prospects of literature among ourselves. Do 
w^e possess, indeed, what may be called a national 
literature? Have we produced eminent writers in 
the various departments of intellectual effort ? Are 
our chief resources of instruction and literary enjoy- 
ment furnished from ourselves ? We regret that the 
reply to these questions is so obvious. The few 
standard works which we have produced, and which 
promise to live, can hardly, by any courtesy, be 
denominated a national Hterature. On this point, 
if marks and proofs of our real condition were 
needed, we should find them in the current apologies 
for our deficiencies. Our writers are accustomed, 
to plead in our excuse our youth, the necessities of a 
newly settled country, and the direction of our best 



58 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

talents to practical life. Be the pleas sufficient or 
not, one thing they prove, and that is, our conscious- 
ness of having failed to make important contri- 
butions to the interests of the intellect. . . . 

With these views, we do and must lament that, 
however we surpass other nations in providing for, 
and spreading elementary instruction, we fall behind 
many in provision for the liberal training of the 
intellect, for forming great scholars, for communicat- 
ing that profound knowledge, and that thirst for 
higher truths, which can alone originate a com- 
manding literature. The truth ought to be known. 
There is among us much superficial knowledge, 
but little severe, persevering research; little of that 
consuming passion for new truth which makes out- 
ward things worthless; little resolute devotion 
to a high intellectual culture. There is nowhere 
a literary atmosphere, or such an accumulation 
of literary influence, as determines the whole strength 
of the mind to its own enlargement, and to the mani- 
festation of itself in enduring forms. Few among 
us can be said to have followed out any great subject 
of thought patiently, laboriously, so as to know 
thoroughly what others have discovered and taught 
concerning it, 'and thus to occupy a ground from which 
new views may be gained. . . . We grant that 
there is primary necessity for that information and 
skill by which subsistence is earned and life is pre- 
served; for it is plain that we must live in order to 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 



59 



act and improve. But life is the means; action and 
improvement the end; and who will deny that the 
noblest utiUty belongs to that knowledge by which 
the chief purpose of our creation is accomplished ? 

According to these views, a people should honor 
and cultivate, as unspeakably useful, that Uterature 
which corresponds to, and calls forth, the highest 
faculties; which expresses and communicates energy 
of thought, fruitfulness of invention, force of moral 
purpose, a thirst for the true, and a delight in the 
beautiful. According to these views, we attach 
special importance to those branches of literature 
which relate to human nature, and which give it a 
consciousness of its own powers. History has a 
noble use, for it shows us human beings in various 
and opposite conditions, in their strength and weak- 
ness, in their progress and relapses, and thus reveals 
the causes and means by which the happiness and 
virtue of the race may be enlarged. Poetry is useful, 
by touching deep springs in the human soul; by 
giving voice to its more dehcate feelings ; by breath- 
ing out, and making more intelligible, the sympathy 
which subsists between the mind and the outward 
universe; by creating beautiful forms of manifesta- 
tions for great moral truths. Above all, that higher 
philosophy, which treats of the intellectual and moral 
constitution of man, of the foundation of knowledge, 
of duty, of perfection, of our relations to the spiritual 
world, and especially to God — this has a usefulness so 



6o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

peculiar as to throw other departments of knowl- 
edge into obscurity; and a people among whom this 
does not find honor has little ground to boast of its 
superiority to uncivilized tribes. 

It will be seen from these remarks that utiUty, 
with us, has a broad meaning. In truth, we are slow 
to condemn as useless any researches or discoveries 
of original and strong minds, even when we discern in 
them no bearing on any interests of mankind; for 
all truth is of a prolific nature, and has connections 
not immediately perceived; and it may be that what 
we call vain speculations may, at no distant period, 
link themselves with some new facts or theories, and 
guide a profound thinker to the most important 
results. The ancient mathematician, when ab- 
sorbed in solitary thought, little imagined that his 
theorems, after the lapse of ages, were to be applied 
by the mind of Newton to the solution of the myste- 
ries of the universe, and not only to guide the astron- 
omer through the heavens, but the navigator through 
the pathless ocean. For ourselves, we incline to 
hope much from truths which are particularly decried 
as useless; for the noblest and most useful truth is 
of an abstract or universal nature; and yet the ab- 
stract, though susceptible of infinite application, is 
generally, as we know, opposed to the practical. . . . 

Let us not be misunderstood. We have no desire 
to rear in our country a race of pedants, of solemn 
triflers, of laborious commentators on the mysteries 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 6l 

of a Greek accent or a rusty coin. We would have 
men explore antiquity, not to bury themselves in 
its dust, but to learn its spirit, and so to commune 
with its superior minds as to accumulate on the pres- 
ent age the influences of whatever was great and wise 
in former times. What we want is, that those among 
us whom God has gifted to comprehend whatever is 
now known, and to rise to new truths, may find aids 
and institutions to fit them for their high calling, 
and may become at once springs of a higher intel- 
lectual life to their own country, and joint workers 
with the great of all -nations and times in carrying 
forward their race. 

We know that it will be said that foreign scholars, 
bred under institutions which this country cannot 
support, may do our intellectual work, and send us 
books and learning to meet our wants. To this we 
have much to answer. In the first place, we reply 
that, to avail ourselves of the higher literature of 
other nations, we must place ourselves on a level 
with them. The products of foreign machinery we 
can use without any portion of the skill that produced 
them. But works of taste and genius, and profound 
investigations of philosophy, can only be estimated 
and enjoyed through a culture and power corre- 
sponding to that from which they sprung. . . . We 
mean not to be paradoxical, but we believe that it 
would be better to admit no books from abroad than 
to make them substitutes for our own intellectual 



62 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

activity. The more we receive from other countries, 
the greater the need of an original Uterature. A 
people into whose minds the thoughts of foreigners 
are poured perpetually, needs an energy within itself 
to resist, to modify this mighty influence, and, with- 
out it, will inevitably sink under the worst bondage, 
will become intellectually tame and enslaved. We 
have certainly no desire to complete our restrictive 
system by adding to it a Uterary non-intercourse 
law. We rejoice in the increasing intellectual con- 
nection between this country and the Old World; 
but sooner would we rupture it than see our country 
sitting passively at the feet of foreign teachers. 
It were better to have no literature than form our- 
selves unresistingly on a foreign one. The true sov- 
ereigns of a country are those who determine its 
mind, its modes of thinking, its tastes, its principles; 
and we cannot consent to lodge this sovereignty in 
the hands of strangers. A country, like an indi- 
vidual, has dignity and power only in proportion as it 
is self-formed. There is a great stir to secure to our- 
selves the manufacturing of our own clothing. We 
say, let others spin and weave for us, but let them 
not think for us. A people whose government and 
laws are nothing but the embodying of public opinion, 
should jealously guard this opinion against foreign 
dictation. We need a literature to counteract, and 
to use wisely the literature which we import. . . . 
We have hitherto spoken of literature as the 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 63 

expression, the communication, of the higher minds 
in a community. We now add that it does much 
more than is commonly supposed to form such minds, 
so that, without it, a people wants one of the chief 
means of educating or perfecting talent and genius. 
One of the great laws of our nature, and a law sin- 
gularly important to social beings, is, that the intel- 
lect enlarges and strengthens itself by expressing 
worthily its best views. In this, as in other respects, 
it is more blessed to give than to receive. Superior 
minds are formed, not merely by solitary thought, 
but almost as much by communication. Great 
thoughts are never fully possessed till he who has 
conceived them has given them fit utterance. One 
of the noblest and most invigorating labors of genius 
is to clothe its conceptions in clear and glorious 
forms, to give them existence in other souls. Thus 
literature creates, as well as manifests, intellectual 
power, and, without it, the highest minds will never 
be summoned to the most invigorating action. 

We doubt whether a man ever brings his faculties 
to bear with their whole force on a subject until he 
writes upon it for the instruction or gratification of 
others. ... 

We come now to our last — and what we deem 
a weighty — argument in favor of a native literature. 
We desire and would cherish it, because we hope 
from it important aids to the cause of truth and hu- 
man nature. We believe that a Uterature, spring- 



64 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

ing up in this new soil, would bear new fruits, and, 
in some respects, more precious fruits, than are else- 
where produced. . . . The great distinction of our 
country is, that we enjoy some peculiar advantages 
for understanding our own nature. Man is the great 
subject of literature, and juster and profounder views 
of man may be expected here than elsewhere. 

In Europe, political and artificial distinctions 
have, more or less, triumphed over and obscured our 
common nature. In Europe, we meet kings, nobles, 
priests, peasants. How much rarer is it to meet 
men; by which we mean human beings conscious 
of their own nature, and conscious of the utter worth- 
lessness of all outward distinctions compared with 
what is treasured up in their own souls. Man does 
not value himself as man. It is for his blood, his 
rank, or some artificial distinction, and not for the 
attributes of humanity, that he holds himself in 
respect. The institutions of the Old World all tend 
to throw obscurity over what we most need to know, 
and that is, the worth and claims of a human being. 
We know that great improvements in this respect 
are going on abroad. Still, the many are too often 
postponed to the few. The mass of men are regarded 
as instruments to work with, as materials to be shaped 
for the use of their superiors. That consciousness 
of our own nature which contains, as a germ, all 
nobler thoughts, which teaches us at once self-respect 
and respect for others, and which binds us to God 



WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING 65 

by filial sentiment and hope, — this has been re- 
pressed, kept down by establishments founded in 
force; and literature, in all its departments, bears, 
we think, the traces of this inward degradation. . . . 
We have no thought of speaking contemptuously 
of the literature of the Old World. It is our daily 
nutriment. We feel our debt to be immense to the 
glorious company of pure and wise minds which 
foreign lands have bequeathed us in writing their 
choicest thoughts and holiest feelings. Still, we 
feel that all existing literature has been produced 
under influences which have necessarily mixed with 
it much error and corruption; and that the whole 
of it ought to pass, and must pass, under rigorous 
review. For example, we think that the history of 
the human race is to be rewritten. Men imbued 
with the prejudices which thrive under aristocracies 
and state religions cannot understand it. Past ages, 
with their great events and great men, are to undergo, 
we think, a new trial, and to yield new results. It is 
plain that history is already viewed under new as- 
pects, and we believe that the true principles for 
studying and writing it are to be unfolded here, at 
least as rapidly as in other countries. It seems to 
us that in literature an immense work is yet to be 
done. The most interesting questions to mankind 
are yet in debate. Great principles are yet to be 
settled in criticism, in morals, in politics; and, above 
all, the true character of religion is to be rescued 



66 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

from the disguises and corruptions of ages. We want 
a reformation. We want a literature, in which 
genius will pay supreme if not undivided homage 
to truth and virtue; in which the childish admira- 
tion of what has been called greatness will give place 
to a wise moral judgment; which will breathe rev- 
erence for the mind, and elevating thoughts of God. 
The part which this country is to bear in this great 
intellectual reform we presume not to predict. We 
feel, however, that, if true to itself, it will have the 
glory and happiness of giving new impulses to the 
human mind. This is our cherished hope. We 
should have no heart to encourage native hterature, 
did we not hope that it would become instinct with 
a new spirit. We cannot admit the thought that this 
country is to be only a repetition of the Old World. 
We delight to beUeve that God, in the fullness of time, 
has brought a new continent to light, in order that the 
human mind should move here with a new freedom, 
should frame new social institutions, should explore 
new paths, and reap new harvests. We are ac- 
customed to estimate nations by their creative 
energies; and we shall blush for our country if, in 
circumstances so peculiar, original, and creative, 
it shall satisfy itself with a passive reception and 
mechanical reiteration of the thoughts of strangers. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 

1 783-1859 



This writer, so identified with American literature, was born 
in New York City, his father being Scotch, and his mother, 
English. Before he was twenty years old he began writing 
newspaper dramatic and social criticisms; then studied law, 
wTien his health enforced a two years' absence in European 
travel. He never practiced law, gravitating naturally to liter- 
ary pursuits, writing with Paulding the amusing '* Salma- 
gundi," papers, and in 1809 publishing the famous ''History 
of New York, by Diedrich Knickerbocker," which made 
Irving known on both sides the Atlantic, and to such men 
abroad as Scott, Campbell, Moore, and other literary lights. 
The word ''Knickerbocker," too, became a name for the older 
and better grade of New Yorkers, and for the group of writers 

— Paulding, Drake, Halleck, Bryant, etc. — who soon 
arose in that city. Irving shortly after went abroad again, was 
received enthusiastically in England, wrote and published 
there his "Sketch-Book," "Bracebridge Hall," and "Tales 
of a Traveler," while after some years' residence in Spain he 
produced his "Columbus," "Conquest of Granada," "The 
Alhambra," and other Spanish works. After his return home 
in 1832, he wrote sundry works on American themes, and 
several notable biographies. In 1842 Irving again went 
abroad, as United States minister to Spain. After four years 
he returned to his pleasant home of "Sunnyside," at Tarry- 
town on the Hudson River — a region he had made famous 
with "Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip Van Winkle" — and there 
prepared his last and most elaborate work, the "Life of Wash- 
ington." 

Delightful in personality, graceful, genial, elevating, and 
felicitous in his literary career, Irving was a product of the 
finer qualities of the three countries of his parentage and origin 

— one of the earliest bonds of affection between the Old World 
and the New. 



68 



THE MUTABILITY OF LITERATURE 

A COLLOQUY IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY 

I know that all beneath the moon decays, 
And what by mortals in this world is brought 
In time's great period shall return to nought. 

I know that all the muse's heavenly lays, 
With toil of sprite which are so dearly bought, 
As idle sounds, of few or none are sought; 

That there is nothing lighter than mere praise. 
— Drummond of Hawthornden. 

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, 
in which we naturally steal away from noise and 
glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may 
indulge our reveries and build our air-castles undis- 
turbed. In such a mood I was loitering about the 
old gray cloisters of Westminster Abbey, enjoying 
that luxury of wandering thought which one is apt 
to dignify with the name of reflection ; when suddenly 
an interruption of madcap boys from Westminster 
School, playing at football, broke in upon the mo- 
nastic stillness of the place, making the vaulted pas- 
sages and moldering tombs echo with their merri- 
ment. I sought to take refuge from their noise by 
penetrating still deeper into the solitudes of the pile, 
and applied to one of the vergers for admission to 
the library. He conducted me through a portal 

69 



70 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

rich with the crumbling sculpture of former ages, 
which opened upon a gloomy passage leading to 
the chapter-house and the chamber in which Dooms- 
day-book is deposited. Just within the passage is 
a small door on the left. To this the verger applied 
a key; it was double-locked, and opened with some 
difficulty, as if seldom used. We now ascended a 
dark, narrow staircase, and, passing through a 
second door, entered the library. 

I found myself in a lofty antique hall, the roof 
supported by massive joists of old EngUsh oak. 
It was soberly Ughted by a row of Gothic windows 
at a considerable height from the floor, and which 
apparently opened upon the roofs of the cloisters. 
An ancient picture of some reverend dignitary of the 
church in his robes hung over the fireplace. Around 
the hall and in a small gallery were the books, 
arranged in carved oaken cases. They consisted 
principally of old polemical writers, and were much 
more worn by time than use. In the center of the 
library was a soUtary table with two or three books 
on it, an inkstand without ink, and a few pens 
parched by long disuse. The place seemed fitted 
for quiet study and profound m.editation. It was 
buried deep among the massive walls of the abbey, 
and shut up from the tumult of the world. I could 
only hear now and then the shouts of the school-boys 
faintly swelling from the cloisters, and the sound of 
a bell tolling for prayers, echoing soberly along the 



WASHINGTON IRVING 7I 

roofs of the abbey. By degrees the shouts of merri- 
ment grew fainter and fainter, and at length died 
away; the bell ceased to toll, and a profomid silence 
reigned through the dusky hall. 

I had taken down a Uttle thick quarto, curiously 
bound in parchment, with brass clasps, and seated 
myself at the table in a venerable elbow-chair. 
Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the 
solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, 
into a train of musing. As I looked around upon 
the old volumes in their moldering covers, thus 
ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed 
in their repose, I could not but consider the Ubrary 
a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like 
mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken 
and molder in dusty oblivion. 

How much, thought I, has each of these volumes, 
now thrust aside with such indifference, cost some 
aching head! how many weary days! how many 
sleepless nights! How have their authors buried 
themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters; 
shut themselves up from the face of man, and the 
still more blessed face of nature: and devoted them- 
selves to painful research and intense reflection! 
And all for what? to occupy an inch of dusty shelf, 
— to have the title of their works read now and 
then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman 
or casual straggler like myself; and in another age 
to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the amount 



72 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

of this boasted immortality. A mere temporary 
rumor, a local sound ; like the tone of that bell which 
has just tolled among these towers, filUng the ear 
for a moment — lingering transiently in echo — and 
then passing away like a thing that was not! 

While I sat half murmuring, half meditating 
these unprofitable speculations, with my head rest- 
ing on my hand, I was thrumming with the other 
hand upon the quarto, until I accidentally loosened 
the clasps; when, to my utter astonishment, the 
Uttle book gave two or three yawns, like one awak- 
ing from a deep sleep; then a husky hem; and at 
length began to talk. At first its voice was very 
hoarse and broken, being much troubled by a cob- 
web which some studious spider had woven across 
it; and having probably contracted a cold from long 
exposure to the chills and damps of the abbey. 
In a short time, however, it became more distinct, 
and I soon found it an exceedingly fluent, con- 
versable Uttle tome. Its language, to be sure, was 
rather quaint and obsolete, and its pronunciation, 
what, in the present day, would be deemed bar- 
barous; but I shall endeavor, as far as I am able, 
to render it in modern parlance. 

It began with raiUngs about the neglect of the 
world — about merit being suffered to languish 
in obscurity, and other such commonplace topics 
of literary repining, and complained bitterly that 
it had not been opened for more than two centuries. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



73 



That the dean only looked now and then into the 
library, sometimes took down a volume or two, 
trifled with them for a few moments, and then re- 
turned them to their shelves. "What a plague do 
they mean,'' said the little quarto, which I began to 
perceive was somewhat choleric, — "what a plague 
do they mean by keeping several thousand volumes 
of us shut up here, and watched by a set of old vergers, 
like so many beauties in a harem, merely to be looked 
at now and then by the dean ? Books were written 
to give pleasure and to be enjoyed; and I would 
have a rule passed that the dean should pay each of 
us a visit at least once a year; or, if he is not equal 
to the task, let them once in a while turn loose the 
whole School of Westminster among us, that at any 
rate we may now and then have an airing." 

"Softly, my worthy friend," replied I; "you are 
not aware how much better you are off than most 
books of your generation. By being stored away 
in this ancient Ubrary, you are hke the treasured 
remains of those saints and monarchs which lie 
enshrined in the adjoining chapels ; while the remains 
of your contemporary mortals, left to the ordinary 
course of nature, have long since returned to dust." 

"Sir," said the little tome, ruffling his leaves and 
looking big, "I was written for all the world, not for 
the bookworms of an abbey. I was intended to 
circulate from hand to hand, like other great con- 
temporary works; but here have I been clasped 



74 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

up for more than two centuries, and might have 
silently fallen a prey to these worms that are playing 
the very vengeance with my intestines, if you had 
not by chance given me an opportunity of uttering 
a few last words before I go to pieces." 

"My good friend," rejoined I, ''had you been left 
to the circulation of which you speak, you would 
long ere this have been no more. To judge from 
your physiognomy, you are now well stricken in 
years; very few of your contemporaries can be at 
present in existence; and those few owe their lon- 
gevity to being immured like yourself in old Ubraries ; 
which, suffer me to add, instead of likening to harems, 
you might more properly and gratefully have com- 
pared to those infirmaries attached to reUgious 
estabUshments, for the benefit of the old and de- 
crepit, and where, by quiet fostering and no employ- 
ment, they often endure to an amazingly good-for- 
nothing old age. You talk of your contemporaries 
as if in circulation, — where do we meet with their 
works ? What do we hear of Robert Groteste, of 
Lincoln ? No one could have toiled harder than he 
for immortaHty. He is said. to have written nearly 
tw^o hundred volumes. He built, as it were, a pyra- 
mid of books to perpetuate his name; but, alas! 
the pyramid has long since fallen, and only a few 
fragments are scattered in various libraries, where 
they are scarcely disturbed even by the antiquarian. 
What do we hear of Giraldus Cambrensis, the 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



75 



historian, antiquary, philosopher, theologian, and 
poet ? He declined two bishoprics, that he might 
shut himself up and write posterity; but posterity 
never inquires after his labors. What of Henry 
of Huntingdon, who, besides a learned history of 
England, wrote a treatise on the contempt of the 
world, which the world has revenged by forgetting 
him ? What is quoted of Joseph of Exeter, styled 
the miracle of his age in classical composition ? 
Of his three great heroic poems one is lost forever, 
excepting a mere fragment; the others are known 
only to a few of the curious in Uterature; and as 
to his love-verses and epigrams, they have entirely 
disappeared. What is in current use of John WalUs, 
the Franciscan, who acquired the name of the tree of 
life? Of William of Malmsbury; — of Simeon of 
Durham; — of Benedict of Peterborough; — of John 

Hanvill of St. Albans; — of '' 

^^ Prithee, friend," cried the quarto, in a testy 
tone, ^' how old do you think me ? You are talking 
of authors that lived long before my time, and wrote 
either in Latin or French, so that they in a manner 
expatriated themselves, and deserved to be forgotten ; ^ 

^ In Latin and French hath many soueraine wittes had 
great delyte to endite, and' have many noble thinges fulfilde, 
but certes there ben some that speaken their poisye in French, 
of which speche the Frenchmen have as good a fantasye as 
we have in hearying of Frenchmen's Englishe. — Chaucer*s 
Testament of Love, 



76 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

but I, sir, was ushered into the world from the press 
of the renowned Wynkyn de Worde. I was written 
in my own native tongue, at a time when the language 
had become fixed; and indeed I was considered a 
model of pure and elegant English. '^ 

(I should observe that these remarks were couched 
in such intolerably antiquated terms, that I have 
had infinite difficulty in rendering them into modern 
phraseology.) 

"I cry your mercy,'' said I, ^^for mistaking your 
age; but it matters little: almost all the writers of 
your time have likewise passed into f orgetf ulness ; 
and De Worde's publications are mere literary 
rarities among book-collectors. The purity and 
stability of language, too, on which you found your 
claims to perpetuity, have been the fallacious de- 
pendence of authors of every age, even back to the 
times of the worthy Robert of Gloucester, who wrote 
his history in rhymes of mongrel Saxon.^ Even 
now many talk of Spenser's ^Well of pure English 

^ Holinshed, in his Chronicle, observes: '^Afterwards, also, 
by deligent travell of Gefifry Chaucer and of John Gowre, in 
the time of Richard the Second, and after them of John Sco- 
gan and John Lydgate, monke of Berrie, our said toong was 
brought to an excellent passe, notwithstanding that it never 
came unto the type of perfection until the time of Queen Eliza- 
beth, wherein John Jewell, Bishop of Sarum, John Fox, and 
sundrie learned and excellent writers, have fully accomplished 
the ornature of the same, to their great praise and immortal 
commendation." 



WASHINGTON IRVING 77 

undefiled' as if the language ever sprang from a 
well or fountain-head, and was not rather a mere 
confluence of various tongues, perpetually subject 
to changes and intermixtures. It is this which has 
made EngHsh literature so extremely mutable, and 
the reputation built upon it so fleeting. Unless 
thought can be committed to something more per- 
manent and unchangeable than such a medium, 
even thought must share the fate of everything else, 
and fall into decay. This should serve as a check 
upon the vanity and exultation of the most popular 
writer. He finds the language in which he has 
embarked his fame gradually altering, and subject 
to the dilapidations of time and the caprice of fashion. 
He looks back and beholds the early authors of his 
country, once the favorites of their day, supplanted 
by modern writers. A few short ages have covered 
them with obscurity, and their merits can only be 
relished by the quaint taste of the bookworm. 
And such, he anticipates, will be the fate of his own 
work, which, however it may be admired in its day, 
and held up as a model of purity, will in the course 
of years grow antiquated and obsolete; until it 
shall become as unintelligible in its native land as 
an Egyptian obehsk, or one of those Runic inscrip- 
tions said to exist in the deserts of Tartary. I 
declare," added I, with some emotion, ^^when I 
contemplate a modern library, filled with new works, 
in all the bravery of rich gilding and binding, I feel 



78 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

disposed to sit down and weep; like the good Xerxes, 
when he surveyed his army, pranked out in all the 
splendor of military array, and reflected that in one 
hundred years not one of them would be in existence ! ^' 

"Ah," said the little quarto, with a heavy sigh, 
"I see how it is; these modern scribblers have 
superseded all the good old authors. I suppose 
nothing is read nowadays but Sir Philip Sydney's 
* Arcadia,' Sackville's stately plays, and 'Mirror 
for Magistrates,' or the fine-spun euphuisms of the 
'unparalleled John Lyly.'" 

''There you are again mistaken," said I; "the 
writers whom you suppose in vogue, because they 
happened to be so when you were last in circulation, 
have long since had their day. Sir PhiKp Sydney's 
'Arcadia,' the immortality of which was so fondly 
predicted by his admirers,^ and which, in truth, 
is full of noble thoughts, delicate images, and graceful 
turns of language, is now scarcely ever mentioned. 
Sackville has strutted into obscurity; and even 
Lyly, though his writings were once the delight of 
a court, and apparently perpetuated by a proverb, 

^ Live ever sweete booke; the simple image of his gentle 
witt, and the golden-pillar of his noble courage; and ever 
notify unto the world that thy writer was the secretary of elo- 
quence, the breath of the muses, the honey-bee of the dainty- 
est flowers of witt and arte, the pith of morale and intellectual 
virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the tongue of Suada 
in the chamber, the sprite of Practise in esse, and the paragon 
of excellency in print. — Harvey Piercers Supererogation. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 79 

is now scarcely known even by name. A whole 
crowd of authors who wrote and wrangled at the time, 
have likewise gone down, with all their writings and 
their controversies. Wave after wave of succeeding 
literature has rolled over them, until they are buried 
so deep, that it is only now and then that some in- 
dustrious diver after fragments of antiquity brings 
up a specimen for the gratification of the curious. 

^^For my part," I continued, '^I consider this 
mutability of language a wise precaution of Provi- 
dence for the benefit of the world at large, and of 
authors in particular. To reason from analogy, 
we daily behold the varied and beautiful tribes of 
vegetables springing up, flourishing, adorning the 
fields for a short time, and then fading into dust, 
to make way for their successors. Were not this the 
case, the fecundity of nature would be a grievance 
instead of a blessing. The earth would groan with 
rank and excessive vegetation, and its surface be- 
come a tangled wilderness. In like manner the 
works of genius and learning decline, and make way 
for subsequent productions. Language gradually 
varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors 
who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, 
the creative powers of genius would overstock the 
world, and the mind would be completely bewildered 
in the endless mazes of literature. Formerly there 
were some restraints on this excessive multiplication. 
Works had to be transcribed by hand, which was 



8o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

a slow and laborious operation; they were written 
either on parchment, which was expensive, so that 
one work was often erased to make way for another; 
or on papyrus, which was fragile and extremely 
perishable. Authorship was a limited and unprofit- 
able craft, pursued chiefly by monks in the leisure 
and solitude of their cloisters. The accumulation 
of manuscripts was slow and costly, and confined 
almost entirely to monasteries. To these circum- 
stances it may, in some measure, be owing that we 
have not been inundated by the intellect of antiq- 
uity; that the fountains of thought have not been 
broken up, and modern genius drowned in the del- 
uge. But the inventions of paper and the press 
have put an end to all these restraints. They have 
made every one a writer, and enabled every mind 
to pour itself into print, and diffuse itself over the 
whole intellectual world. The consequences are 
alarming. The stream of literature has swollen into 
a torrent — augumented into a river — expanded 
into a sea. A few centuries since, five or six hundred 
manuscripts constituted a great library; but what 
would you say to libraries such as actually exist 
containing three or four hundred thousand volumes; 
legions of authors at the same time busy; and the 
press going on with activity, to double and quadruple 
the number. Unless some unforeseen mortality 
should break out among the progeny of the Muse, 
now that she has become so prolific, I tremble for 



WASHINGTON IRVING 8 1 

posterity. I fear the mere fluctuation of language 
will not be sufficient. Criticism may do much. 
It increases with the increase of literature, and 
resembles one of those salutary checks on population 
spoken of by economists. All possible encourage- 
ment, therefore, should be given to the growth of 
critics, good or bad. But I fear all will be in vain; 
let criticism do what it may, writers will write, 
printers will print, and the world will inevitably 
be overstocked with good books. It will soon be the 
employment of a lifetime merely to learn their names. 
Many a man of passable information, at the present 
day, reads scarcely anything but reviews; and be- 
fore long a man of erudition will be little better than 
a mere walking catalogue." 

^'My very good sir," said the little quarto, yawn- 
ing most drearily in my face, ^^ excuse my interrupting 
you, but I perceive you are rather given to prose. 
I would ask the fate of an author who was making 
some noise just as I left the world. His reputation, 
however, was considered quite temporary. The 
learned shook their heads at him, for he was a poor, 
half -educated varlet, that knew little of Latin, 
and nothing of Greek, and had been obliged to run 
the country for deer-stealing. I think his name was 
Shakespeare. I presume he soon sunk into oblivion." 

"On the contrary," said I, "it is owing to that 
very man that the literature of his period has ex- 
perienced a duration beyond the ordinary term of 



82 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

English literature. There rise authors now and 
then, who seem proof against the mutability of 
language, because they have rooted themselves in 
the unchanging principles of human nature. They 
are like gigantic trees that we sometimes see on the 
banks of a stream; which, by their vast and deep 
roots, penetrating through the mere surface, and 
laying hold of the very foundations of the earth, 
preserve the soil around them from being swept away 
by the ever-flowing current, and hold up many a 
neighboring plant, and, perhaps, worthless weed, 
to perpetuity. Such is the case with Shakespeare, 
whom we behold defying the encroachments of time, 
retaining in modern use the language and literature 
of his day, and giving duration to many an indifferent 
author, merely from having flourished in his vicinity. 
But even he, I grieve to say, is gradually assuming 
the tint of age, and his whole form is overrun by 
a profusion of commentators, who, like clambering 
vines and creepers, almost bury the noble plant 
that upholds them." 

Here the little quarto began to heave his sides 
and chuckle, until at length he broke out in a plethoric 
fit of laughter that had well-nigh choked him, by 
reason of his excessive corpulency. ^'Mighty well!" 
cried he, as soon as he could recover breath ; ^' mighty 
well! and so you would persuade me that the Utera- 
ture of an age is to be perpetuated by a vagabond 
deer-stealer! by a man without learning; by a poet, 



WASHINGTON IRVING 83 

forsooth — a poet!'' And here he wheezed forth 
another fit of laughter. 

I confess that I felt somewhat nettled at this 
rudeness, which, however, I pardoned on account of 
his having flourished in a less polished age. I de- 
termined, nevertheless, not to give up my point. 

^^Yes," resumed I, positively, ^^a poet; for of all 
writers he has the best chance for inamortality. 
Others may write from the head, but he writes from 
the heart, and the heart will always understand him. 
He is the faithful portrayer of nature, whose features 
are always the same, and always interesting. Prose 
writers are voluminous and unwieldy; their pages 
are crowded with commonplaces, and their thoughts 
expanded into tediousness. But with the true 
poet everything is terse, touching, or briUiant. 
He gives the choicest thoughts in the choicest lan- 
guage. He illustrates them by everything that he 
sees most striking in nature and art. He enriches 
them by pictures of human life, such as it is passing 
before him. His writings, therefore, contain the 
spirit, the aroma, if I may use the phrase, of the age 
in which he lives. They are caskets which enclose 
within a small compass the wealth of the language, 
— its family jewels, which are thus transmitted in 
a portable form to posterity. The setting may 
occasionally be antiquated, and require now and 
then to be renewed, as in the case of Chaucer; but 
the brilliancy and intrinsic value of the gems con- 



84 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tinue unaltered. Cast a look back over the long 
reach of literary history. What vast valleys of 
dullness, filled with monkish legends and academical 
controversies! what bogs of theological speculations ! 
what dreary wastes of metaphysics ! Here and there 
only do we behold the heaven-illuminated bards, 
elevated like beacons on their widely separated 
heights, to transmit the pure light of poetical in- 
telligence from age to age/' 

I was just about to launch forth into eulogiums 
upon the poets of the day, when the sudden open- 
ing of the door caused me to turn my head. It was 
the verger, who came to inform me that it was time 
to close the library. I sought to have a parting 
word with the quarto, but the worthy little tome 
was silent; the clasps were closed; and it looked 
perfectly unconscious of all that had passed. I have 
been to the library two or three times since, and have 
endeavored to draw it into further conversation, 
but in vain; and whether all this rambling colloquy 
actually took place, or whether it was another of 
those odd day-dreams to which I am subject, I have 
never to this moment been able to discover. 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 

1811-1849 



This noted Southern genius was the son of a Baltimorean 
of good family who had become an actor, and who with his 
wife, an actress, was fulfilling engagements in Boston when the 
boy was born. The parents both dying shortly after, their 
three children were adopted by generous friends in Richmond, 
Virginia, Edgar by Mr. John Allan. The boy was educated, 
in school, by tutors, and in the University of Virginia, until, 
despite his brilliant scholarship, waywardness brought expulsion. 

The publication of a slight volume of poems, two years' 
enlistment in the army, an appointment to West Point and dis- 
missal within a year, brought POE to literary labor for a liveli- 
hood. In Baltimore he lived and wrought, becoming editor 
of the Southern Literary Messenger^ in which his criticisms, 
poems, and tales gained quick public recognition. At this time, 
too (1836), he married his cousin. Miss Virginia Clemm, whom 
he devotedly loved. But Poe's irregularities threw him out 
again. After this he found editorial work in Philadelphia, 
and then in New York, always doing brilliant service but never 
steadily. And thus he struggled on until his distressing death. 

Poe's home life was ideally devoted and lovely; but a native 
melancholy temperament seemed to draw him to drink, which 
crazed his abnormally sensitive nerves. He was faithful and 
efficient, but periodically revolted from the restraint of work. As 
critic he was incisive, even caustic, yet sympathetically recog- 
nized the fineness of such men as Hawthorne and Longfellow 
in their beginnings. As poet, he was highly imaginative, al- 
though in a strange, unnatural fashion, which, however, his 
exquisite rhythmic gift and tireless patience of elaboration 
wrought into melodies and harmonies that will not die. His 
talent in the short story was a marvel, his ingenuity astonishing ; 
but, like his poems, his tales are brooded with fantasies of 
gloom and at times of positively thrilling horror. 

A strange, unhappy man, the very conditions of whose genius 
made him erratic: but he has left literature that will endure. 



86 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF COMPOSI- 
TION 

Charles Dickens, in a note now lying before me, 
alluding to an examination I once made of the 
mechanism of '^Barnaby Rudge," says — "By the 
way, are you aware that Godwin wrote his 'Caleb 
Williams ' backwards ? He first involved his hero in 
a web of difficulties, forming the second volume, and 
then, for the first, cast about him for some mode 
of accounting for what had been done.'' 

I cannot think this the precise mode of procedure 
on the part of Godwin, — and indeed what he him- 
self acknowledges is not altogether in accordance 
with Mr. Dickens' idea, — but the author of "Caleb 
William^s" was too good an artist not to perceive 
the advantage derivable from at least a somewhat 
similar process. Nothing is more clear than that 
every plot, worth the name, must be elaborated to 
its denouement before anything be attempted with 
the pen. It is only with the denouement constantly 
in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air 
of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, 
and especially the tone at all points, tend to the 
development of the intention. 

87 



88 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

There is a radical error, I think, in the usual mode 
of constructing a story. Either history affords a 
thesis — or one is suggested by an incident of the 
day, — or, at best, the author sets himself to work 
in the combination of striking events to form merely 
the basis of his narrative — designing, generally, 
to fill in with description, dialogue, or autorial com- 
ment, whatever crevices of fact, or action, may, 
from page to page, render themselves apparent. 

I prefer commencing with the consideration of an 
effect. Keeping originality always in view — for he is 
false to himself who ventures to dispense with so 
obvious and so easily attainable a source of interest 
— I say to myself, in the first place, ^^Of the in- 
numerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, 
the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is suscepti- 
ble, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select? '' 
Having chosen a novel, first, and secondly a vivid 
effect, I consider whether it can be best wrought by 
incident or tone — whether by ordinary incidents 
and peculiar tone, or the converse, or by peculiarity 
both of incident and tone — afterward looking about 
me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, 
or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of 
the effect. 

I have often thought how interesting a magazine 
paper might be written by any author who would — 
that is to say who could — detail, step by step, the 
processes by which any one of his compositions 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 89 

attained its ultimate point of completion. Why 
such a paper has never been given to the world, I am 
much at a loss to say — but, perhaps, the autorial 
vanity has had more to do with the omission than any 
one other cause. Most writers — poets in especial 

— prefer having it understood that they compose by 
a species of fine frenzy — an ecstatic intuition — 
and would positively shudder at letting the pubHc 
take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and 
vacillating crudities of thought — at the true pur- 
poses seized only at the last moment — at the in- 
numerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the 
maturity of full view — at the fully matured fancies 
discarded in despair as unmanageable — at the cau- 
tious selections and rejections — at the painful 
erasures and interpolations — in a word, at the 
wheels and pinions — the tackle for scene-shifting 

— the step-ladders and demon-traps — the cock's 
feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, 
in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute 
the properties of the literary histrio. 

I am aware, on the other hand, that the case is by 
no means common, in which an author is at all in 
condition to retrace the steps by which his conclusions 
have been attained. In general suggestions, having 
arisen pell-mell, are pursued and forgotten in a 
similar manner. 

For my own part, I have neither sympathy with 
the repugnance alluded to, nor at any time the least 



90 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

difficulty in recalling to mind the progressive steps 
of any of my compositions; and, since the interest 
of an analysis, or reconstruction, such as I have 
considered a desideratum, is quite independent of 
any real or fancied interest in the thing analyzed, 
it will not be regarded as a breach of decorum on 
my part to show the modus operandi by which some 
one of my own works was put together. I select 
"The Raven," as most generally known. It is my 
design to render it manifest that no one point in its 
composition is referable either to accident or in- 
tuition — that the work proceeded, step by step, 
to its completion with the precision and rigid con- 
sequence of a mathematical problem. 

Let us dismiss, as irrelevant to the poem, per se, 
the circumstance — or say the necessity — which, 
in the first place, gave rise to the intention of com- 
posing a poem that should suit at once the popular 
and the critical taste. 

We commence, then, with this intention. 

The initial consideration was that of extent. If any 
literary work is too long to be read at one sitting, 
we must be content to dispense with the immensely 
important effect derivable from unity of impression 
— for, if two sittings be required, the affairs of the 
world interfere, and everything like totality is at 
once destroyed. But since, ceteris paribus, no poet 
can afford to dispense with anything that may 
advance his design, it but remains to be seen whether 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 9 1 

there is, in extent, any advantage to counterbalance 
the loss of unity which attends it. Here I say no, 
at once. What we term a long poem is, in fact, 
merely a succession of brief ones — that is to say, 
of brief poetical effects. It is needless to demon- 
strate that a poem is such, only inasmuch as it 
intensely excites, by elevating, the soul; and all 
intense excitements are, through a psychal necessity, 
brief. For this reason, at least one-half of the 
^^ Paradise Lost" is essentially prose — a succession 
of poetical excitements interspersed, inevitably, with 
corresponding depressions — the whole being de- 
prived, through the extremeness of its length, of the 
vastly important artistic element, totality, or unity, 
of effect. 

It appears evident, then, that there is a distinct 
limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art — 
the limit of a single sitting — and that, although in 
certain classes of prose composition, such as ^^ Robin- 
son Crusoe," (demanding no unity,) this limit may 
be advantageously overpassed, it can never properly 
be overpassed in a poem. Within this limit, the 
extent of a poem may be made to bear mathemati- 
cal relation to its merit — in other words, to the 
excitement or elevation — again in other words, to 
the degree of the true poetical effect which it is ca- 
pable of inducing; for it is clear that the brevity must 
be in direct ratio of the intensity of the intended 
effect; — this, with one proviso — that a certain 



92 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

degree of duration is absolutely requisite for tlie 
production of any effect at all. 

Holding in view these considerations, as well as 
that degree of excitement which I deemed not above 
the popular, while not below the critical, taste, I 
reached at once what I conceived the proper length 
for my intended poem — a length of about one 
hundred lines. It is, in fact, a hundred and 
eight. 

My next thought concerned the choice of an impres- 
sion, or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as 
well observe that, throughout the construction, I 
kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work 
universally appreciable. I should be carried too far 
out of my immediate topic were I to demonstrate a 
point upon which I have repeatedly insisted, and 
which, with the poetical, stands not in the slightest 
need of demonstration — the point, I mean, that 
Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem. 
A few words, however, in elucidation of my real 
meaning, which some of my friends have evinced a 
disposition to misrepresent. That pleasure w^hich is 
at once the most intense, the most elevating, and the 
most pure, is, I believe, found in the contemplation 
of the beautiful. When, indeed, men speak of 
Beauty, they mean, precisely, not a quality, as is 
supposed, but an effect — they refer, in short, just 
to that intense and pure elevation of soul — not 
of intellect, or of heart — upon which I have com- 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 93 

mented, and which is experienced in consequence of 
contemplating ^Hhe beautiful." Now I designate 
Beauty as the province of the poem, merely because 
it is an obvious rule of Art that effects should be 
made to spring from direct causes — that objects 
should be attained through means best adapted for 
their attainment — no one as yet having been weak 
enough to deny that the peculiar elevation alluded 
to is most readily attained in the poem. Now the 
object, Truth, or the satisfaction of the intellect, and 
the object. Passion, or the excitement of the heart, 
are, although attainable, to a certain extent, in poetry, 
far more readily attainable in prose. Truth, in fact, 
demands a precision, and Passion a homeliness (the 
truly passionate will comprehend me) which are abso- 
lutely antagonistic to that Beauty which, I main- 
tain, is the excitement, or pleasurable elevation, of 
the soul. It by no means follows from anything here 
said, that passion, or even truth, may not be intro- 
duced, and even profitably introduced, into a poem, 
— for they may serve in elucidation, or aid the gen- 
eral effect, as do discords in music, by contrast, — 
but the true artist will always contrive, first, to tone 
them into proper subservience to the predominant 
aim, and, secondly, to enveil them, as far as possible, 
in that Beauty which is the atmosphere and the 
essence of the poem. 

Regarding, then. Beauty, as my province, my next 
question referred to the tone of its highest manifesta- 



94 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tion — and all experience has shown that this tone is 
one of sadness. Beauty of whatever kind, in its 
supreme development, invariably excites the sensi- 
tive soul to tears. Melancholy is thus the most 
legitimate of all the poetical tones. 

The length, the province, and the tone, being thus 
determined, I betook myself to ordinary induction, 
with the view of obtaining some artistic piquancy 
which might serve me as a key-note in the construc- 
tion of the poem — some pivot upon which the whole 
structure might turn. In carefully thinking over all 
the usual artistic effects — or more properly points , 
in the theatrical sense — I did not fail to perceive 
immediately that no one had been so universally 
employed as that of the refrain. The universaUty of 
its employment sufficed to assure me of its intrinsic 
value, and spared me the necessity of submitting it 
to analysis. I considered it, however, with regard to 
its susceptibUity of improvement, and soon saw it 
to be in a primitive condition. As commonly used, 
the refrain, or burden, not only is hmited to lyric 
verse, but depends for its impression upon the force 
of monotone — both in sound and thought. The 
pleasure is deduced solely from the sense of identity 
— of repetition. I resolved to diversify, and so 
heighten, the effect, by adhering, in general, to the 
monotone of sound, while I continually varied that 
of thought: that is to say, I determined to produce 
continuously novel effects, by the variation of the 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 95 

application of the refrain — the refrain itself remain- 
ing, for the most part, unvaried. 

These points being settled, I next bethought me of 
the nature of my refrain. Since its application was to 
be repeatedly varied, it was clear that the refrain 
itself must be brief, for there would have been an 
insurmountable difficulty in frequent variations of 
application in any sentence of length. In proportion 
to the brevity of the sentence, would, of course, be 
the facility of the variation. This led me at once 
to a single word as the best refrain. 

The question now arose as to the character of the 
word. Having made up my mind to a refrain, the 
division of the poem into stanzas was, of course, a 
corollary: the refrain forming the close of each stanza. 
That such a close, to have force, must be sonorous 
and susceptible of protracted emphasis, admitted 
no doubt: and these considerations inevitably led 
me to the long as the most sonorous vowel, in con-, 
nection with r as the most producible consonant. 

The sound of the refrain being thus determined, 
it became necessary to select a word embodying this 
sound, and at the same time in the fullest possible 
keeping with that melancholy which I had predeter- 
mined as the tone of the poem. In such a search it 
would have been absolutely impossible to overlook 
the word ^^ Nevermore.'' In fact, it was the very first 
which presented itself. 

The next desideratum was a pretext for the continu- 



96 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

ous use of the one word '^nevermore." In observing 
the difficulty which I at once found in inventing a 
sufficiently plausible reason for its continuous repe- 
tition, I did not fail to perceive that this difficulty 
arose solely from the pre-assumption that the word 
was to be so continuously or monotonously spoken 
by a human being — I did not fail to perceive, in 
short, that the difficulty lay in the reconciliation of 
this monotony with the exercise of reason on the part 
of the creature repeating the word. Here, then, im- 
mediately arose the idea of a /zo^-reasoning creature 
capable of speech; and, very naturally, a parrot, in 
the first instance, suggested itself, but was super- 
seded forthwith by a Raven, as equally capable 
of speech, and infinitely more in keeping with the 
intended tone. 

I had now gone so far as the conception of a Raven 
— the bird of ill omen — monotonously repeating the 
,one word, '^Nevermore,'' at the conclusion of each 
stanza, in a poem of melancholy tone, and in length 
about one hundred lines. Now, never losing sight of 
the object supremeness, or perfection, at all points, I 
asked myself — ^^Of all melancholy topics, what, 
according to the universal understanding of mankind, 
is the most melancholy ? " Death — was the obvious 
reply. ^^And when," I said, ^4s this most melan- 
choly of topics most poetical ?" From what I have 
already explained at some length, the answer, here 
also, is obvious — ''When it most closely allies itself 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 97 

to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, 
unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world 
— and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best 
suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover." 
I had now to combine the two ideas, of a lover 
lamenting his deceased mistress and a Raven continu- 
ously repeating the word ^^ Nevermore.'' — I had to 
combine these, bearing in mind my design of varying, 
at every turn, the application of the word repeated; 
but the only intelligible mode of such combination is 
that of imagining the Raven employing the word in 
answer to the queries of the lover. And here it was 
that I saw at once the opportunity afforded for the 
effect on which I had been depending — that is to 
say, the effect of the variation of application, I saw 
that I could make the first query propounded by the 
lover — the first query to which the Raven should 
reply "Nevermore" — that I could make this first 
query a commonplace one — the second less so — the 
third still less, and so on — until at length the lover, 
startled from his original nonchalance by the melan- 
choly character of the word itself — by its frequent 
repetition — and by a consideration of the ominous 
reputation of the fowl that uttered it — is at length 
excited to superstition, and wildly propounds queries 
of a far different character — queries whose solution 
he has passionately at heart — propounds them half 
in superstition and half in that species of despair 
which delights in self-torture — propounds tliem 



98 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

not altogether because he beUeves in the prophetic 
or demoniac character of the bird (which, reason 
assures him, is merely repeating a lesson learned by 
rote), but because he experiences a phrenzied pleasure, 
in so modeling his questions as to receive from the 
expected "Nevermore'' the most delicious because: 
the most intolerable of sorrow. Perceiving the 
opportunity thus afforded me — or, more strictly,, 
thus forced upon me in the progress of the construc- 
tion — I first established in mind the climax, or con- 
cluding query — that query to which "Nevermore'" 
should be in the last place an answer — that in reply 
to which this word "Nevermore" should involve the 
utmost conceivable amount of sorrow and despair. 

Here then the poem maybe said to have its begin- 
ning, — at the end, where all works of art should begin, 
— for it was here, at this point of my preconsidera- 
tions, that I first put pen to paper in the composition 
of the stanza: — 

''Prophet," said I, ''thing of evil! prophet still if bird or 

devil ! 
By that heaven that bends above us — by that God we both 

adore, 
Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aidenn, 
It ghall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name 

Lenore — 
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name 

Lenore." 

Quoth the raven, "Nevermore," 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 99 

I composed this stanza, at this point, first that, by 
establishing the climax, I might the better vary and 
graduate, as regards seriousness and importance, the 
preceding queries of the lover — and, secondly, that 
I might definitely settle the rhythm, the meter, and 
the length and general arrangement of the stanza — 
as well as graduate the stanzas which were to precede, 
so that none of them might surpass this in rhythmical 
effect. Had I been able, in the subsequent com- 
position, to construct more vigorous stanzas, I should, 
without scruple, have purposely enfeebled them, so 
as not to interfere with the climacteric effect. 

And here I may as well say a few words of the 
versification. My first object (as usual) was origi- 
nality. The extent to which this has been neglected, 
in versification, is one of the most unaccountable 
things in the world. Admitting that there is little 
possibility of variety in mere rhythm, it is still clear 
that the possible varieties of meter and stanza are 
absolutely infinite — and yet, for centuries, no man, 
in verse, has ever done, or ever seemed to think of doing, 
an original thing. The fact is, that originality (unless 
in minds of very unusual force) is by no means a 
matter, as some suppose, of impulse or intuition. 
In general, to be found, it must be elaborately sought, 
and although a positive merit of the highest class, 
demands in its attainment less of invention than 
negation. 

Of course, I pretend to no originaUty in either the 



lOO BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

rhythm or meter of the ^' Raven/' The former is 
trochaic — the latter is octameter acatalectic, alter- 
nating with heptameter catalectic repeated in the 
refrain of the fifth verse, and terminating with te- 
trameter catalectic. Less pedantically — the feet 
employed throughout (trochees) consist of a long 
syllable followed by a short: the first line of the 
stanza consists of eight of these feet — the second 
of seven and a half (in effect two-thirds) — the third 
of eight — the fourth of seven and a half — the fifth 
the same — the sixth three and a half. Now, each 
of these lines, taken individually, has been employed 
before, and what originality the ^* Raven'' has, is 
in their combination into stanza; nothing even re- 
motely approaching this combination has ever been 
attempted. The effect of this originality of com- 
bination is aided by other unusual, and some 
altogether novel effects, arising from an extension 
of the application of the principles of rhyme and 
alliteration. 

The next point to be considered was the mode of 
bringing together the lover and the Raven — and the 
first branch of this consideration was the locale. For 
this the most natural suggestion might seem to be a 
forest, or the fields — but it has always appeared to 
me that a close circumscription of space is absolutely 
necessary to the effect of insulated incident : — it has 
the force of a frame to a picture. It has an indis- 
putable moral power in keeping concentrated the 



EDGAR ALLAN POE lOI 

attention, and, of course, must not be confounded 
with mere unity of place. 

I determined, then, to place the lover in his cham- 
ber — ^ in a chamber rendered sacred to him by memo- 
ries of her who had frequented it. The room is 
represented as richly furnished — this in mere pursu- 
ance of the ideas I have already explained on the sub- 
ject of Beauty, as the sole true poetical thesis. 

The locale being thus determined, I had now to 
introduce the bird — and the thought of introducing 
him through the window was inevitable. The idea 
of making the lover suppose, in the first instance, that 
the flapping of the wings of the bird against the 
shutter, is a ^'tapping'' at the door, originated in a 
wish to increase, by prolonging, the reader's curi- 
osity, and in a desire to admit the incidental effect 
arising from the lover's throwing open the door, 
finding all dark, and thence adopting the half 
fancy that it was the spirit of his mistress that 
knocked. 

I made the night tempestuous, first, to account for 
the Raven's seeking admission, and secondly, for the 
effect of contrast with the (physical) serenity within 
the chamber. 

I made the bird alight on the bust of Pallas, also for 
the effect of contrast between the marble and the plu- 
mage — it being understood that the bust was abso- 
lutely suggested by the bird — the bust of Pallas 
being chosen, first, as most in keeping with the schol- 



I02 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

arship of the lover, and, secondly, for the sonorousness 
of the word, Pallas, itself. 

About the middle of the poem, also, I have availed 
myself of the force of contrast, with a view of deepen- 
ing the ultimate impression. For example, an air of 
the fantastic — approaching as nearly to the ludi- 
crous as was admissible — is given to the Raven's 
entrance. He comes in ^^with many a flirt and 
flutter.'' 

Not the least obeisance made he; not a moment stopped 

or stayed he, 
But with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber 

door. 

In the two stanzas which follow, the design is more 
obviously carried out: — 

Then this ebon bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling 
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore, 
*' Though thy crest he shorn and shaven, thou," I said, ^^art 

sure no craven; 
Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven, wandering from the 

nightly shore — 
Tell me what thy brdly name is on the Night's Plutonian 

shore?'' 

Quoth the Raven, ^'Nevermore." 

Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so 

plainly 
Though its answer little meaning, little relevancy bore; 
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being 



EDGAR ALLAN POE I03 

Fjver yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber doory 

Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, 

With such name as ^'Nevermore." 

The effect of the denouement being thus provided 
for, I immediately drop the fantastic for a tone of the 
most profound seriousness : — his tone commencing 
in the stanza directly following the one last quoted, 
with the line, 

But the Raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke 
only, etc. 

From this epoch the lover no longer jests — no 
longer sees anything even of the fantastic in the 
Raven's demeanor. He speaks of him as a '^grim, 
ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore,'' 
and feels the ^^ fiery eyes" burning into his "bosom's 
core." This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the 
lover's part, is intended to induce a similar one on 
the part of the reader — to bring the mind into a 
proper frame for the denouement — which is now 
brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible. 

With the denouement proper — with the Raven's 
reply, "Nevermore," to the lover's final demand if 
he shall meet his mistress in another world — the 
poem, in its obvious phase, that of a simple narrative, 
may be said to have its completion. So far, every- 
thing is witliin the limits of the accountable — of 
the real. A raven, having learned by rote the single 
word "Nevermore," and having escaped from the 



I04 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

custody of its owner, is driven at midnight, through 
the violence of a storm, to seek admission at a win- 
dow from which a Ught still gleams — the chamber- 
window of a student, occupied half in poring over 
a volume, half in dreaming of a beloved mistress 
deceased. The casement being thrown open at the 
fluttering of the bird's wings, the bird itself perches 
on the most convenient seat out of the immediate 
reach of the student, who, amused by the incident 
and the oddity of the visitor's demeanor, demands 
of it, in jest and without looking for a reply, its name. 
The raven addressed, answers with its customary 
word, *^ Nevermore" — a word which finds imme- 
diate echo in the melancholy heart of the student, 
who, giving utterance aloud to certain thoughts sug- 
gested by the occasion, is again startled by the fowl's 
repetition of ^^ Nevermore. " The student now guesses 
the state of the case, but is impelled, as I have before 
explained, by the human thirst for self-torture, and in 
part by superstition, to propound such queries to the 
bird as will bring him, the lover, the most of the 
luxury of sorrow, through the anticipated answer 
*^ Nevermore." With the indulgence, to the extreme, 
of this self-torture, the narration, in what I have 
termed its first or obvious phase, has a natural ter- 
mination, and so far there has been no overstepping 
of the limits of the real. 

But in subjects so handled, however skillfully, or 
with however vivid an array of incident, there is 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 



105 



always a certain hardness or nakedness, which repels 
the artistical eye. Two things are invariably re- 
quired — first, some amount of complexity, or more 
properly, adaptation; and, secondly, some amount 
of suggestiveness — some under-current, however 
indefinite, of meaning. It is this latter, in especial, 
which imparts to a work of art so much of that 
richness (to borrow from colloquy a forcible term) 
which we are too fond of confounding with the ideal. 
It is the excess of the suggested meaning — it is the 
rendering this the upper instead of the under current 
of the theme — which turns into prose (and that of the 
very flattest kind) the so-called poetry of the so-called 
transcendentalists. 

Holding these opinions, I added the two concluding 
stanzas of the poem — their suggestiveness being thus 
made to pervade all the narrative which has preceded 
them. The under-current of meaning is rendered 
first apparent in the lines — 

''Take thy beak from out my heart , and take thy form from 
off my door!" 

Quoth the Raven ''Nevermore!" 

It will be observed that the words, ^^from out my 
heart,'' involve the first metaphorical expression in 
the poem. They, with the answer, "Nevermore,'' 
dispose the mind to seek a moral in all that has been 
previously narrated. The reader begins now to 
regard the Raven as emblematical — but it is not 



Io6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



until the very last line of the very last stanza, that 
the intention of making him emblematical of Mourn- 
ful and Never-ending Remembrance is permitted dis- 
tinctly to be seen: 

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting, 
On the pallid bust of Pallas, just above my chamber door; 
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is 

dreaming, 
And the lamplight o'er him streaming throws his shadow 

on the floor; 
And my som\ from out that shadow that lies floating on the 

floor 

Shall be lifted — nevermore ! 



.at ■' 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

I 803-1 882 



Descendant of a long line of clergymen, Emerson was for 
a few years a minister in Boston, but retired to a greater free- 
dom, as writer and lecturer. After some European wandering, 
during which began his friendship with Carlyle, he found in 
Concord an atmosphere of quiet for contemplation and work. 
He lectured in various places on science, biography, history; 
but in 1836 he issued a little book entitled '' Nature," which 
startled readers with a new idealism. The next year his 
address on ''The American Scholar" struck a fresh note, 
scorning dependence on tradition and European influences. 
And the year after that he made an address to the senior class 
of the Divinity School of Harvard, which aroused religionists 
with a fresh breeze of reality in the stimulating thought, 
''that God is, not was; that he speaketh, not spake." From 
that time Emerson gave forth, in lectures, essays, poems, ad- 
dresses, thoughts on all the pursuits and interests of man, that, 
while mystical in jsxpression, became clear with study; while 
called "transcendental," were founded in sense and sanity; 
while labeled "dangerous" by religious formalists, brought 
light to the perplexed, courage to the disheartened, and to earnest 
souls weary of the husks of dogmatism gave a new and radiant 
faith in the Divine. 

To select one of Emerson's multitudinous essays is like 
wandering in Aladdin's cave of splendor; but the one on "Com- 
pensation" seems to combine as much of his lofty thinking 
on lowly, common things, his ideal philosophy and Yankee 
shrewdness, his hard sense and noble sentiment, as could be 
packed into so brief a space. He was unquestionably America's 
most original thinker, and, more than any other one, gave the 
impulse which has developed into the enlargement of the Chris- 
tian consciousness of the present day. 



108 



COMPENSATION 

Ever since I was a boy I have wished to write a 
discourse on Compensation; for it seemed to me 
when very young that on this subject Life was ahead 
of theology and the people knew more than the 
preachers taught. The documents, too, from which 
the doctrine is to be drawn, charmed my fancy by 
their endless variety, and lay always before me, even 
in sleep; for they are the tools in our hands, the bread 
in our basket, the transactions of the street, the farm 
and the dwelling-house; the greetings, the relations, 
the debts and credits, the influence of character, 
the nature and endowment of all men. It seemed 
to me also that in it might be shown men a ray of 
divinity, the present action of the Soul of this world, 
clean from all vestige of tradition; and so the heart 
of man might be bathed by an inundation of eternal 
love, conversing with that which he knows was always 
and always must be, because it really is now. It 
appeared moreover that if this doctrine could be 
stated in terms with any resemblance to those bright 
intuitions in which this truth is sometimes revealed 
to us, it would be a star in many dark hours and 

109 



no BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

crooked passages in our journey, that would not 
suffer us to lose our way. 

I was lately confirmed in these desires by hearing 
a sermon at church. The preacher, a man esteemed 
for his orthodoxy, unfolded in the ordinary manner 
the doctrine of the Last Judgment. He assumed 
that judgment is not executed in this world; that the 
wicked are successful; that the good are miserable; 
and then urged from reason and from Scripture a 
compensation to be made to both parties in the next 
life. No offense appeared to be taken by the con- 
gregation at this doctrine. As far as I could observe 
when the meeting broke up, they separated without 
remark on the sermon. 

Yet w^hat was the import of this teaching ? What 
did the preacher mean by saying that the good are 
miserable in the present life? Was it that houses 
and lands, offices, wine, horses, dress, luxury, are 
had by unprincipled men, whilst the saints are poor 
and despised ; and that a compensation is to be made 
to these last hereafter, by giving them the like grati- 
fications another day, — bank-stock and doubloons, 
venison and champagne? This must be the com- 
pensation intended; for what else? Is it that they 
are to have leave to pray and praise? to love and 
serve men? Why, that they can do now. The 
legitimate inference the disciple would draw was, 
^^ We are to have such a good time as the sinners 
have now " ; — or, to push it to its extreme import, — 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON III 

• 

^'You sin now, we shall sin by-and-by; we would 
sin now, if we could; not being successful, we expect 
our revenge to-morrow." 

The fallacy lay in the immense concession that the 
bad are successful; that justice is not done now. 
The blindness of the preacher consisted in deferring 
to the base estimate of the market of what consti- 
tutes a manly success, instead of confronting and 
convicting the world from the truth ; announcing the 
Presence of the Soul; the omnipotence of the Will; 
and so establishing the standard of good and ill, of 
success and falsehood, and summoning the dead to 
its present tribunal. 

I find a similar base tone in the popular religious 
works of the day and the same doctrines assumed by 
the literary men when occasionally they treat the 
related topics. I think that our popular theology 
has gained in decorum, and not in principle, over 
the superstitions it has displaced. But men are 
better than this theology. Their daily life gives it the 
lie. Every ingenuous and aspiring soul leaves the 
doctrine behind him in his own experience, and all 
men feel sometimes the falsehood which they cannot 
demonstrate. For men are wiser than they know. 
That which they hear in schools and pulpits without 
afterthought, if said in conversation would probably 
be questioned in silence. If a man dogmatize in a 
mixed company on Providence and the divine laws, 
he is answered by a silence which conveys well 



112 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

enough to an observer the dissatisfaction of the 
hearer, but his incapacity to make his own state- 
ment. 

I shall attempt in this and the following chapter to 
record some facts that indicate the path of the law of 
Compensation; happy beyond my expectation if I 
shall truly draw the smallest arc of this circle. 

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every 
part of nature; in darkness and light, in heat and 
cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and 
female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants 
and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; 
in the undulations of fluids and of sound; in the 
centrifugal and centripetal gravity; in electricity, 
galvanism, and chemical affinity. Superinduce mag- 
netism at one end of a needle, the opposite magnetism 
takes place at the other end. If the south attracts, 
the north repels. To empty here, you must con- 
dense there. An inevitable dualism bisects nature, 
so that each thing is a half, and suggests another 
thing to make it whole; aSj spirit, matter; man, 
woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, 
under; motion, rest; yea, nay. 

Whilst the world is thus dual, so is every one of 
its parts. The entire system of things gets repre- 
sented in every particle. There is somewhat that 
resembles the ebb and flow of the sea, day and night, 
man and woman, in a single needle of the pine, in 
a kernel of corn, in each individual of every animal 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON II3 

tribe. The reaction, so grand in the elements, is 
repeated within these small boundaries. For exam- 
ple, in the animal kingdom the physiologist has ob- 
served that no creatures are favorites, but a certain 
compensation balances every gift and every defect. 
A surplusage given to one part is paid out of a reduc- 
tion from another part of the same creature. If the 
head and neck are enlarged, the trunk and extremi- 
ties are cut short. 

The theory of the mechanic forces is another ex- 
ample. What we gain in power is lost in time, and 
the converse. The periodic or compensating errors 
of the planets is another instance. The influences 
of climate and soil in political history are another. 
The cold climate invigorates. The barren soil does 
not breed fevers, crocodiles, tigers, or scorpions. 

The same dualism underlies the nature and con- 
dition of man. Every excess causes a defect ; every 
defect an excess. Every sweet hath its sour; every 
evil its good. Every faculty which is a receiver of 
pleasure has an equal penalty put on its abuse. It 
is to answer for its moderation with its life. For 
every grain of wit there is a grain of folly. For 
everything you have missed, you have gained some- 
thing else; and for everything you gain, you lose 
something. If riches increase, they are increased 
that use them. If the gatherer gathers too much, 
nature takes out of the man what she puts into his 
chest; swells the estate, but kills the owner. Na- 



114 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

ture hates monopolies and exceptions. The waves 
of the sea do not more speedily seek a level from 
their loftiest tossing than the varieties of condition 
tend to equalize themselves. There is always some 
leveling circumstance that puts down the overbear- 
ing, the strong, the rich, the fortunate, substantially 
on the same ground with all others. Is a man too 
strong and fierce for society and by temper and 
position a bad citizen, — a morose ruffian, with a 
dash of the pirate in him ? — nature sends him a 
troop of pretty sons and daughters who are getting 
along in the dame's classes at the village school, and 
love and fear for them smooths his grim scowl to 
courtesy. Thus she contrives to intenerate the gran- 
ite and felspar, takes the boar out and puts the lamb 
in, and keeps her balance true. 

The farmer imagines power and place are fine 
things. But the President has paid dear for his 
White House, It has commonly cost him all his 
peace, and the best of his manly attributes. To 
preserve for a short time so conspicuous an appear- 
ance before the world, he is content to eat dust be- 
fore the real masters who stand erect behind the 
throne. Or do men desire the more substantial and 
permanent grandeur of genius? Neither has this 
an immunity. He who by force of will or of thought 
is great and overlooks thousands, has the responsi- 
bility of. overlooking. With every influx of light 
comes new danger. Has he light? he must bear 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON II 5 

witness to the light, and always outrun that sym- 
pathy which gives him such keen satisfaction, by 
his fidelity to new revelations of the incessant soul. 
He must hate father and mother, wife and child. 
Has he all that the world loves and admires and 
covets ? — ^ he must cast behind him their admiration 
and afflict them by faithfulness to his truth and be- 
come a byword and a hissing. 

This Law writes the laws of the cities and nations. 
It will not be balked of its end in the smallest iota. 
It is in vain to build or plot or combine against it. 
Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Res nolunt 
diu male administrari. Though no checks to a new 
evil appear, the checks exist, and will appear. If 
the government is cruel, the governor's life is not 
safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield 
nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, 
juries will not convict. Nothing arbitrary, nothing 
artificial can endure. The true life and satisfactions 
of men seem to elude the utmost rigors or felicities 
of condition and to establish themselves with great 
indifferency under all varieties of circumstance. Un- 
der all governments the influence of character re- 
mains the same, — in Turkey and New England 
about alike. Under the primeval despots of Egypt, 
history honestly confesses that man must have been 
as free as culture could make him. 

These appearances indicate the fact that the uni- 
verse is represented in every one of its particles. 



Il6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

Every thing in nature contains all the powers of 
nature. Every thing is made of one hidden stuff; 
as the naturalist sees one t3^e under every meta- 
morphosis, and regards a horse as a running man, 
a fish as a swimming man, a bird as a flying man, 
a tree as a rooted man. Each new form repeats 
not only the main character of the type, but part 
for part all the details, all the aims, furtherances, 
hindrances, energies, and whole system of every 
other. Every occupation, trade, art, transaction, is 
a compend of the world and a correlative of every 
other. Each one is an entire emblem of human life; 
of its good and ill, its trials, its enemies, its course, 
and its end. And each one must somehow accom- 
modate the whole man and recite all his destiny. 

The world globes itself in a drop of dew. The 
microscope cannot find the animalcule which is less 
perfect for being httle. Eyes, ears, taste, smell, 
motion, resistance, appetite, and organs of reproduc- 
tion that take hold on eternity, — all find room to 
consist in the small creature. So do we put our 
life into every act. The true doctrine of omnipres- 
ence is that God reappears with all his parts in every 
moss and cobweb. The value of the universe con- 
trives to throw itself into every point. If the good 
is there, so is the evil; if the affinity, so the repul- 
sion; if the force, so the hmitation. 

Thus is the universe alive. All things are moral. 
That soul which within us is a sentiment, outside 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 17 

of US is a law. We feel its inspirations ; out there in 
history we can see its fatal strength. It is almighty. 
All nature feels its grasp. ''It is in the world, and 
the world was made by it.'^ It is eternal, but it 
enacts itself in time and space. Justice is not post- 
poned. A perfect equity adjusts its balance in all 
parts of life. 01 kv^ol Atos ati evTriirrovcn, The 
dice of God are always loaded. The world looks 
like a multiplication-table, or a mathematical equa- 
tion, which, turn it how you will, balances itself. 
Take what figure you will, its exact value, nor more 
nor less, still returns to you. Every secret is told, 
every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every 
wrong redressed, in silence and certainty. What 
we call retribution is the universal necessity by which 
the whole appears wherever a part appears. If you 
see smoke, there must be fire. If you see a hand or 
a limb, you know that the trunk to which it belongs 
is there behind. 

Every act rewards itself, or in other words inte- 
grates itself, in a twofold manner: first in the thing, 
or in real nature; and secondly in the circumstance, 
or in apparent nature. Men call the circumstance 
the retribution. The casual retribution is in the 
thing and is seen by the soul. The retribution in the 
circumstance is seen by the understanding; it is 
inseparable from the thing, but is often spread over a 
long time and so does not become distinct until after 
many years. The specific stripes may follow late 



Il8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



after the offense, but they follow because they accom- 
pany it. Crime and punishment grow out of one 
stem. Punishment is a fruit that unsuspected ripens 
within the flower of the pleasure which concealed it. 
Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, 
cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in 
the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit 
in the seed. 

Whilst thus the world will be whole and refuses 
to be disparted, we seek to act partially, to sunder, 
to appropriate; for example, — to gratify the senses 
we sever the pleasure of the senses from the needs 
of the character. The ingenuity of man has been 
dedicated to the solution of one problem, — how to 
detach the sensual sweet, the sensual strong, the 
sensual bright, etc., from the moral sweet, the moral 
deep, the moral fair; that is, again, to contrive to 
cut clean off this upper surface so thin as to leave it 
bottomless; to get a one end, without an other end. 
The soul says. Eat; the body would feast. The soul 
says. The man and woman shall be one flesh and 
one soul; the body would join the flesh only. The 
soul says. Have dominion over all things to the ends 
of virtue; the body would have the power over things 
to its own ends. 

The soul strives amain to live and work through 
all things. It would be the only fact. All things 
shall be added unto it, — power, pleasure, knowl- 
edge, beauty. The particular man aims to be some- 



1 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 119 

body; to set up for himself; to truck and higgle for 
a private good; and, in particulars, to ride that he 
may ride; to dress that he may be dressed; to eat 
that he may eat; and to govern, that he may be seen. 
Men seek to be great; they would have oflSces, 
wealth, power, and fame. They think that to be 
great is to get only one side of nature, — the sweet, 
without the other side, — the bitter. 

Steadily is this dividing and detaching counter- 
acted. Up to this day it must be owned no projector 
has had the smallest success. The parted water re- 
unites behind our hand. Pleasure is taken out of 
pleasant things, profit out of profitable things, power 
out of strong things, the moment we seek to separate 
them from the whole. We can no more halve things 
and get the sensual good, by itself, than we can get 
an inside that shall have no outside, or a Hght with- 
out a shadow. "Drive out nature with a fork, she 
comes running back.'' 

Life invests itself with inevitable conditions, which 
the unwise seek to dodge, which one and another 
brags that he does not know, brags that they do not 
touch him; — but the brag is on his lips, the condi- 
tions are in his soul. If he escapes them in one part 
they attack him in another more vital part. If he 
has escaped them in form and in the appearance, it 
is because he has resisted his life and fled from him- 
self, and the retribution is so much death. So signal 
is the failure of all attempts to make this separation 



I20 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

of the good from the tax, that the experiment would 
not be tried, — since to try it is to be mad, — but for 
the circumstance that when the disease began in the 
will, of rebellion and separation, the intellect is at 
once infected, so that the man ceases to see God 
whole in each object, but is able to see the sensual 
allurement of an object and not see the sensual hurt; 
he sees the mermaid's head but not the dragon's tail, 
and thinks he can cut off that which he would have 
from that which he would not have. "How secret 
art thou who dwellest in the highest heavens in 
silence, O thou only great God, sprinkling with an 
unwearied providence certain penal blindnesses upon 
such as have unbridled desires!" ^ 

The human soul is true to these facts in the paint- 
ing of fable, of history, of law, of proverbs, of con- 
versation. It finds a tongue in literature unawares. 
Thus the Greeks called Jupiter, Supreme Mind; but 
having traditionally ascribed to him many base ac- 
tions, they involuntarily made amends to Reason by 
tying up the hands of so bad a god. He is made as 
helpless as a king of England. Prometheus knows 
one secret which Jove must bargain for; Minerva, 
another. He cannot get his own thunders; Minerva 
keeps the key of them : — 

Of all the gods, I only know the keys 

That ope the solid doors within whose vaults 

His thunders sleep. 

^ St. Augustine, Confessions, B. I. 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 12 1 

A plain confession of the in-working of the All and 
of its moral aim. The Indian mythology ends in 
the same ethics; and indeed it would seem impos- 
sible for any fable to be invented and get any cur- 
rency which was not moral. Aurora forgot to ask' 
youth for her lover, and though so Tithonus is im- 
mortal, he is old. Achilles is not quite invulner- 
able; for Thetis held him by the heel when she 
dipped him in the Styx and the sacred waters did 
not wash that part. Siegfried, in the Nibelungen, 
is not quite immortal, for a leaf fell on his back 
whilst he was bathing in the Dragon's blood, and 
that spot which it covered is mortal. And so it 
always is. There is a crack in every thing God has 
made. Always it would seem there is this vindictive 
circumstance stealing in at unawares even into the 
wild poesy in which the human fancy attempted to 
make bold holiday and to shake itself free of the old 
laws, — this back-stroke, this kick of the gun, certify- 
ing that the law is fatal; that in nature nothing can 
be given, all things are sold. 

This is that ancient doctrine of Nemesis, who 
keeps watch in the Universe and lets no offense go 
unchastised. The Furies they said are attendants 
on Justice, and if the sun in heaven should trans- 
gress his path they would punish him. The poets 
related that stone walls and iron swords and leathern 
thongs had an occult sympathy with the wrongs 
of their owners; that the belt which Ajax gave Hec- 



122 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tor dragged the Trojan hero over the field at the 
wheels of the car of Achilles, and the sword which 
Hector gave Ajax was that on whose point Ajax 
fell. They recorded that when the Thasians erected 
a statue to Theogenes, a victor in the games, one of 
his rivals went to it by night and endeavored to 
throw it down by repeated blows, until at last he 
moved it from its pedestal and was crushed to death 
beneath its fall. 

This voice of fable has in it somewhat divine. It 
came from thought above the will of the writer. 
That is the best part of each writer which has noth- 
ing private in it; that is the best part of each which 
he does not know; that which flowed out of his con- 
stitution and not from his too active invention ; that 
which in the study of a single artist you might not 
easily find, but in the study of many you would ab- 
stract as the spirit of them all. Phidias it is not, 
but the work of man in that early Hellenic world 
that I would know. The name and circumstance 
of Phidias, however convenient for history, embar- 
rasses when we come to the highest criticism. We 
are to see that which man was tending to do in a 
given period, and was hindered, or, if you will, modi- 
fied in doing, by the interfering volitions of Phidias, 
of Dante, of Shakespeare, the organ whereby man at 
the moment wrought. 

Still more striking is the expression of this fact 
in tHe proverbs of all nations, which are always the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 23 

literature of Reason, or the statements of an abso- 
lute truth without quahfication. Proverbs, like the 
sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of 
the Intuitions. That which the . droning world, 
chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to 
say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in 
proverbs without contradiction. And this law of 
laws, which the pulpit, the senate and the college 
deny, is hourly preached in all markets and all lan- 
guages by flights of proverbs, whose teaching is 
as true and as omnipresent as that of birds and 
flies. 

All things are double, one against another. — Tit 
for tat; an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; 
blood for blood; measure for measure; love for 
love. — Give, and it shall be given you. — He that 
watereth shall be watered himself. — What will you 
have? quoth God; pay for it and take it. — Noth- 
ing venture, nothing have. — Thou shalt be paid 
exactly for what thou hast done, no more, no less. — 
Who doth not work shall not eat. — Harm watch, 
harm catch. — Curses always recoil on the head of 
him who imprecates them. — If you put a chain 
around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens 
itself around your own. — Bad counsel confounds the 
adviser. — The devil is an ass. 

It is thus written, because it is thus in life. Our 
action is overmastered and characterized above our 
will by the law of nature. We aim at a petty end 



124 ^EST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

quite aside from the public good, but our act arranges 
itself by irresistible magnetism in a line with the 
poles of the world. 

A man cannot speak but he judges himself. With 
his will or against his will he draws his portrait 
to the eye of his companions by every word. Every 
opinion reacts on him who utters it. It is a thread- 
ball thrown at a mark, but the other end remains 
in the thrower^s bag. Or, rather, it is a harpoon 
thrown at the whale, unwinding, as it fhes, a coil of 
cord in the boat, and, if the harpoon is not good, 
or not well thrown, it will go nigh to cut the steersman 
in twain or to sink the boat. 

You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. 
^^No man had ever a point of pride that was not 
injurious to him," said Burke. The exclusive in 
fashionable life does not see that he excludes him- 
self from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate 
it. The exclusionist in religion does not see that 
he shuts the door of heaven on himself, in striving 
to shut out others. Treat men as pawns and nine- 
pins and you shall suffer as well as they. If you 
leave out their heart, you shall lose your own. The 
senses would make things of all persons; of women, 
of children, of the poor. The vulgar proverb, ^'I 
will get it from his purse or get it from his skin,'' is 
sound philosophy. 

All infractions of love and equity in our social 
relations are speedily punished. They are punished 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 125 

by Fear. Whilst I stand in simple relations to my 
fellow-man, I have no displeasure in meeting him. 
We meet as water meets water, or as two currents 
of air mix, with perfect diffusion and interpenetra- 
tion of nature. But as soon as there is any depar- 
ture from simplicity and attempt at halfness, or 
good for me that is not good for him, my neighbor 
feels the wrong; he shrinks from me as far as I have 
shrunk from him; his eyes no longer seek mine; 
there is war between us; there is hate in him and 
fear in me. 

All the old abuses in society, the great and uni- 
versal and the petty and particular, all unjust accu- 
mulations of property and power, are avenged in the 
same manner. Fear is an instructor of great sagacity 
and the herald of all revolutions. One thing he 
always teaches, that there is rottenness where he 
appears. He is a carrion crow, and though you see 
not well what he hovers for, there is death somewhere. 
Our property is timid, our laws are timid, our culti- 
vated classes are timid. Fear for ages has boded 
and mowed and gibbered over government and 
property. That obscene bird is not there for nothing. 
He indicates great wrongs which must be revised. 

Of the like nature is that expectation of change 
which instantly follows the suspension of our volun- 
tary activity. The terror of cloudless noon, the 
emerald of Polycrates, the awe of prosperity, the 
instinct which leads every generous soul to impose 



126 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

on itself tasks of a noble asceticism and vicarious 
virtue, are the tremblings of the balance of justice 
through the heart and mind of man. 

Experienced men of the world know very well that 
it is best to pay scot and lot as they go along, and that 
a man often pays dear for a small frugality. The 
borrower runs in his own debt. Has a man gained 
any thing who has received a hundred favors and 
rendered none ? Has he gained by borrowing, 
through indolence or cunning, his neighbor's wares, 
or horses, or money ? There arises on the deed the 
instant acknowledgment of benefit on the one part 
and of debt on the other; that is, of superiority and 
inferiority. The transaction remains in the memory 
of himself and his neighbor; and every new trans- 
action alters according to its nature their relation to 
each other. He may soon come to see that he had 
better have broken his own bones than to have rid- 
den in his neighbor's coach, and that ^^ the highest 
price he can pay for a thing is to ask for it.'' 

A wise, man will extend this lesson to all parts of 
life, and know that it is always the part of prudence 
to face every claimant and pay every just demand on 
your time, your talents, or your heart. Always pay; 
for first or last you must pay your entire debt. Per- 
sons and events may stand for a time between you 
and justice, but it is only a postponement. You 
must pay at last your own debt. If you are wise 
you will dread a prosperity which only loads you with 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 27 

more. Benefit is the end of nature. But for every 
benefit which you receive, a tax is levied. He is 
great who confers the most benefits. He is base, — 
and that is the one base thing in the universe, — to 
receive favors and render none. In the order of 
nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom 
we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we 
receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed 
for deed, cent for cent, to somebody. Beware of too 
much good staying in your hand. It will fast corrupt 
and worm worms. Pay it away quickly in some sort. 
Labor is watched over by the same pitiless laws. 
Cheapest, says the prudent, is the dearest labor. 
What we buy in a broom, a mat, a wagon, a knife, 
is some application of good sense to a common want. 
It is best to pay in your land a skillful gardener, or to 
buy good sense applied to gardening; in your sailor, 
good sense applied to navigation; in the house, good 
sense applied to cooking, sewing, serving; in your 
agent, good sense applied to accounts and affairs. 
So do you multiply your presence, or spread yourself 
throughout your estate. But because of the dual 
constitution of things, in labor as in life there can be 
no cheating. The thief steals from himself. The 
swindler swindles himself. For the real price of 
labor is knowledge and virtue, whereof wealth and 
credit are signs. These signs, like paper money, 
may be counterfeited or stolen, but that which they 
represent, namely, knowledge and virtue, cannot be 



128 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

counterfeited or stolen. These ends of labor cannot 
be answered but by real exertions of the mind, and 
in obedience to pure motives. The cheat, the de- 
faulter, the gambler, cannot extort the benefit, cannot 
extort the knowledge of material and moral nature 
which his honest care and pains yield to the opera- 
tive. The law of nature is. Do the thing, and you 
shall have the power; but they who do not the thing 
have not the power. 

Human labor, through all its forms, from the sharp- 
ening of a stake to the construction of a city or an 
epic, is one immense illustration of the perfect com- 
pensation of the universe. Everywhere and always 
this law is sublime. The absolute balance of Give 
and Take, the doctrine that every thing has its price, 
and if that price is not paid, not that thing but some- 
thing else is obtained, and that it is impossible to get 
anything without its price, is not less sublime in the 
columns of a ledger than in the budgets of states, in 
the laws of light and darkness, in all the action and re- 
action of nature. I cannot doubt that the high laws 
which each man sees ever implicated in those pro- 
cesses with which he is conversant, the stern ethics 
which sparkle on his chisel-edge, which are measured 
out by his plumb and foot-rule, which stand as mani- 
fest in the footing of the shop-bill as in the history of a 
state, — do recommend to him his trade, and though 
seldom named, exalt his business to his imagination. 

The league between virtue and nature engages all 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 129 

things to assume a hostile front to vice. The beau- 
tiful laws and substances of the world persecute and 
whip the traitor. He finds that things are arranged 
for truth and benefit, but there is no den in the wide 
world to hide a rogue. Commit a crime, and the 
earth is made of glass. There is no such thing as 
concealment. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a 
coat of snow fell on the ground, such as reveals in 
the woods the track of every partridge and fox and 
squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken 
word, you cannot wipe out the foot-track, you cannot 
draw up the ladder, so as to leave no inlet or clew. 
Always some damning circumstance transpires. The 
laws and substances of nature, water, snow, wind, 
gravitation, become penalties to the thief. 

On the other hand the law holds with equal sure- 
ness for all right action. Love, and you shall be 
loved. All love is mathematically just, as much as 
the two sides of an algebraic equation. The good 
man has absolute good, which like fire turns every 
thing to its own nature, so that you cannot do him 
any harm; but as the royal armies sent against 
Napoleon, when he approached cast down their 
colors and from enemies became friends, so do dis- 
asters of all kinds, as sickness, offense, poverty, prove 
benefactors. 

Winds blow and waters roll 

Strength to the brave and power and deity, 

Yet in themselves are nothing. 



130 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

The good are befriended even by weakness and 
defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that 
was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a 
defect that was not somewhere made useful to him. 
The stag in the fable admired his horns and blamed 
his feet, but when the hunter came, his feet saved 
him, and afterwards, caught in the thicket, his horns 
destroyed him. Every man in his lifetime needs to 
thank his faults. As no man thoroughly under- 
stands a truth until first he has contended against it, 
so no man has a thorough acquaintance with the 
hindrances or talents of men until he has suffered 
from the one and seen the triumph of the other over 
his own want of the same. Has he a defect of tem- 
per that unfits him to live in society? Thereby he is 
driven to entertain himself alone and acquire habits 
of self-help; and thus, Uke the wounded oyster, he 
mends his shell with pearl. 

Our strength grows out of our weakness. Not 
until we are pricked and stung and sorely shot at, 
awakens the indignation which arms itself with secret 
forces. A great man is always willing to be little. 
Whilst he sits on the cushion of advantages, he goes 
to sleep. When he is pushed, tormented, defeated, 
he has a chance to learn something; he has been put 
on his wits, on his manhood; he has gained facts; 
learns his ignorance; is cured of the insanity of 
conceit; has got moderation and real skill. The 
wise man always throws himself on the side of his 






RALPH WALDO EMERSON 131 

assailants. It is more his interest than it is theirs to 
find his weak point. The wound cicatrizes and falls 
off from him Hke a dead skin, and when they would 
triumph, lo! he has passed on invulnerable. Blame 
is safer than praise. I hate to be defended in a 
newspaper. As long as all that is said is said against 
me, I feel a certain assurance of success. But as 
soon as honied words of praise are spoken for me I 
feel as one that lies unprotected before his enemies. 
In general, every evil- to which we do not succumb 
is a benefactor. As the Sandwich Islander believes 
that the strength and valor of the enemy he kills 
passes into himself, so we gain the strength of the 
temptation we resist. 

The same guards which protect us from disaster, 
defect and enmity, defend us, if we will, from selfish- 
ness and fraud. Bolts and bars are not the best 
of our institutions, nor is shrewdness in trade a mark 
of wisdom. Men suffer all their life long under the 
foolish superstition that they can be cheated. But 
it is as impossible for a man to be cheated by any 
one but himself, as for a thing to be and not to be 
at the same time. There is a third silent party to all 
our bargains. The nature and soul of things takes 
on itself the guaranty of the fulfillment of every con- 
tract, so that honest service cannot come to loss. 
If you serve an ungrateful master, serve him the 
more. Put God in your debt. Every stroke shall 
be repaid. The longer the payment is withholden, 



132 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

the better for you, for compound interest on com- 
pound interest is the rate and usage of this exchequer. 
The history of persecution is a history of endeavors 
to cheat nature, to make water run up hill, to twist 
a rope of sand. It makes no difference whether the 
actors be many or one, a tyrant or a mob. A mob 
is a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving them- 
selves of reason and traversing its work. The mob 
is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the 
beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions 
are insane, like its whole constitution. It persecutes 
a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and 
feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon 
the houses and persons of those who have these. 
It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire- 
engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the 
stars. The inviolate spirit turns their spite against 
the wrongdoers. The martyr cannot be dishonored. 
Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame ; every prison 
a more illustrious abode; every burned book or house 
enlightens the world: every suppressed or expunged 
word reverberates through the earth from side to 
side. The minds of men are at last aroused; reason 
looks out and justifies her own, and malice finds all 
her work in vain. It is the whipper who is whipped 
and the tyrant who is undone. 

Thus do all things preach the indifferency of cir- 
cumstances. The man is all. Every thing has two 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 133 

sides, a good and an evil. Every advantage has its 
tax. I learn to be content. But the doctrine of 
compensation is not the doctrine of indifferency. 
The thoughtless say, on hearing these representa- 
tions, — What boots it to do well ? there is one 
event to good and evil; if I gain any good I must 
pay for it; if I lose any good I gain some other; 
all actions are indifferent. 

There is a deeper fact in the soul than compensa- 
tion, to wit, its own nature. The soul is not a com- 
pensation, but a life. The soul is. Under all this 
running sea of circumstance, whose waters ebb and 
flow with perfect balance, Hes the aboriginal abyss 
of real Being. Existence, or God, is not a relation 
or a part, but the whole. Being is the vast affirma- 
tive, excluding negation, self-balanced, and swallow- 
ing up all relations, parts and times within itself. 
Nature, truth, virtue, are the influx from thence. 
Vice is the absence or departure of the same. . . . 

[Man's] life is a progress, and not a station. His 
instinct is trust. Our instinct uses ^^more'' and 
*4ess" in application to man, always of the presence 
of the souly and not of its absence; the brave man 
is greater than the coward; the true, the benevolent, 
the wise, is more a man and not less, than the fool 
and knave. There is therefore no tax on the good 
of virtue, for that is the incoming of God himself, 
or absolute existence, without any comparative. All 
external good has its tax, and if it came without 



134 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

desert or sweat, has no root in me, and the next 
wind will blow it away. But all the good of nature 
is the soul's, and may be had if paid for in nature's 
lawful coin, that is, by labor which the heart and the 
head allow. I no longer wish to meet a good I do 
not earn, for example to find a pot of buried gold, 
knowing that it brings with it new responsibility. 
I do not wish more external goods, — neither posses- 
sions, nor honors, nor powers, nor persons. * The 
gain is apparent; the tax is certain. But there is no 
tax on the knowledge that the compensation exists 
and that it is not desirable to dig up treasure. Herein 
I rejoice with a serene eternal peace. ... 

Such also is the natural history of calamity. The 
changes which break up at short intervals the pros- 
perity of men are advertisements of a nature w^hose 
law is growth. Evermore it is the order of nature to 
grow, and every soul is by this intrinsic necessity 
quitting its whole system of things, its friends and 
home and laws and faith, as the shellfish crawls out 
of its beautiful but stony case, because it no longer 
admits of its growth, and slowly forms a new house; 
In proportion to the vigor of the individual thes6 
revolutions are frequent, until in some happier miiid 
they are incessant and all worldly relations hang very 
loosely about him, becoming as it were a transparent 
fluid membrane through which the living form is 
always seen, and not, as in most men, an indurated 
heterogeneous fabric of many dates and of no settled 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 135 

character, in which the man is imprisoned. Then 
there can be enlargement, and the man of to-day 
scarcely recognizes the man of yesterday. And such 
should be the outward biography of man in time, a 
putting off of dead circumstances day by day, as he 
renews his raiment day by day. But to us, in our 
lapsed estate, resting, not advancing, resisting, not 
cooperating with the divine expansion, this growth 
comes by shocks. 

We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let 
our angels go. We do not see that they only go out 
that archangels may come in. We are idolators of 
the old. We do not believe in the riches of the 
soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence. We 
do not believe there is any force in to-day to rival or 
re-create that beautiful yesterday. We linger in the 
ruins of the old tent where once we had bread and 
shelter and organs, nor believe that the spirit can 
feed, cover, and nerve us again. We cannot again 
find aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we 
sit and weep in vain. The voice of the Almighty 
saith, ^' Up and onward f orevermore ! " We cannot 
stay amid the ruins. Neither will we rely on the 
New; and so we walk ever with reverted eyes, like 
those monsters who look backwards. 

And yet the compensations of calamity are made 
apparent to the understanding also, after long inter- 
vals of time. A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disap- 
pointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems 



136 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But 
the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that 
underlies all facts. The death of a dear friend, wife, 
brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, 
somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or 
genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our 
way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of 
youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a 
wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, 
and allows the formation of new ones more friendly 
to the growth of character. It permits or constrains 
the formation of new acquaintances and the recep- 
tion of new influences that prove of the first impor- 
tance to the next years; and the man or woman who 
would have remained a sunny garden-flower, with no 
room for its roots and too much sunshine for its head, 
by the falling of the walls and the neglect of the gar- 
dener is made the banian of the forest, pelding shade 
and fruit to wide neighborhoods of men. 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 

1810-1850 



A woman of marked native ability, and culture both wide and 
deep, Margaret Fuller, born in Cambridgeport, Massachu- 
setts, became early a friend of Emerson, Thoreau, and the 
others of the Transcendental School of writers. She worked 
with Emerson as editor of The Dial, their organ for some years, 
and in 1844-1846, having interested Horace Greeley, became 
literary critic for the New York Tribune. In the latter year 
she went to Europe, and in 1847 was married to the Marquis 
d'Ossoli. Returning to America, with her husband and child, 
in 1850, she and they perished by shipwreck off Fire Island, 
having nearly reached New York. Her principal aim in life 
was the enlargement of the rights and privileges of woman ; 
and, while she left considerable critical work in the realms of 
art and literature, her most representative performance was 
her essay on ''Woman in the Nineteenth Century," the chief 
points of which — without her scholarly illustrations and 
arguments — are given herewith. 



138 



GROWTH: IN MAN; IN WOMAN 

^Trailty, thy name is Woman." 
^'The Earth waits for her Queen.'' 

The connection between these quotations may not 
be obvious, but it is strict. Yet would any contradict 
us, if we made them appHcable to the other side, 
and began also, 

Frailty, thy name is Man. 
The Earth waits for its King? 

Yet Man, if not yet fully installed in his powers, has 
given much earnest of his claims. Frail he is indeed, 
— how frail ! how impure ! Yet often has the vein 
of gold displayed itself amid the baser ores, and Man 
has appeared before us in princely promise, worthy 
of his future. 

If, oftentimes, we see the prodigal son feeding on 
the husks in the fair field no more his own, anon we 
raise the eyelids, heavy from bitter tears, to behold 
in him the radiant apparition of genius and love, 
demanding not less than the all of goodness, power, 
and beauty. We see that in him the largest claim 
finds a due foundation. That claim is for no par- 

139 



140 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tial sway, no exclusive possession. He cannot be 
satisfied with any one gift of life, any one depart- 
ment of knowledge or telescopic peep at the heavens. 
He feels himself called to understand and aid Nature, 
that she may, through this intelligence, be raised and 
interpreted; to be a student of, and servant to, the 
universe-spirit; and king of his planet, that, as an 
angehc minister, he may bring it into conscious har- 
mony with the law of that spirit. 

In clear, triumphant moments, many times, has 
rung through the spheres the prophecy of his jubilee; 
and those moments, though past in time, have been 
translated into eternity by thought. . . . 

Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature 
to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy 
if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal 
ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. 
Poets and priests have strung the lyre with the heart- 
strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar, 
which, reared anew from age to age, shall at last 
sustain the flame pure enough to rise to highest 
heaven. Shall we not name with as deep a benedic- 
tion those who, if not so immediately, or so con- 
sciously, in connection with the eternal truth, yet, 
led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less 
to develop and interpret the open secret of love 
passing into life, energy creating for the purpose of 
happiness; the artist whose hand, drawn by a pre- 
existent harmony to a certain medium, molds it to 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 1 41 

forms of life more highly and completely organized 
than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the 
intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those 
who are not yet wise enough to divine it; the phi- 
losopher who listens steadily for laws and causes, 
and from those obvious infers those yet unknown; 
the historian who, in faith that all events must have 
their reason and their aim, records them, and thus 
fills archives from which the youth of prophets may 
be fed; the man of science dissecting the statements, 
testing the facts and demonstrating order, even 
where he cannot its purpose? 

Lives, too, which bear none of these names, have 
yielded tones of no less significance. The candle- 
stick set in a low place has given Ught as faithfully, 
where it was needed, as that upon the hill. In close 
alleys, in dismal nooks, the Word has been read as 
distinctly as when shown by angels to holy men in 
the dark prison. Those who till a spot of earth 
scarcely larger than is wanted for a grave, have 
deserved that the sun should shine upon its sod till 
violets answer. 

So great has been, from time to time, the promise, 
that, in all ages, men have said the gods themselves 
came down to dwell with them; that the All-Creat- 
ing wandered on the earth to taste, in a limited 
nature, the sweetness of virtue; that the All-Sustain- 
ing incarnated himself to guard, in space and time, 
the destinies of this world; that heavenly genius 



142 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

dwelt among the shepherds, to sing to them and 
teach them how to sing. . . . 

These were the triumphant moments; but soon 
the lower nature took its turn, and the era of a truly 
hirnian life was postponed. 

Thus is man still a stranger to his inheritance, still 
a pleader, still a pilgrim. Yet his happiness is secure 
in the end. And now, no more a glimmering con- 
sciousness, but assurance begins to be felt and spoken, 
that the highest ideal Man can form of his own 
powers is that which he is destined to attain. What- 
ever the soul knows how to seek, it cannot fail to 
obtain. This is the Law and the Prophets. Knock 
and it shall be opened; seek and ye shall find. It is 
demonstrated; it is a maxim. . . . 

Meanwhile, not a few believe, and men themselves 
have expressed the opinion, that the time is come 
when Eurydice is to call for an Orpheus, rather than 
Orpheus for Eurydice; that the idea of Man, how- 
ever imperfectly brought out, has been far more so 
than that of Woman; that she, the other half of 
the same thought, the other chamber of the heart 
of life, needs now take her turn in the full pulsation, 
and that improvement in the daughters will best aid 
in the reformation of the sons of this age. 

It should be remarked that, as the principle of 
liberty is better understood, and niore nobly inter- 
preted, a broader protest is made in behalf of Woman. 
As men become aware that few men have had a fair 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 143 

chance, they are incUned to say that no women have 
had a fair chance. The French revolution, that 
strangely disguised angel, bore witness in favor of 
Woman, but interpreted her claims no less ignorantly 
than those of Man. Its idea of happiness did not 
rise beyond outward enjoyment, unobstructed* by 
the tyranny of others. The title it gave was ^^ci- 
toyen,'' ^^citoyenne^'; and it is not unimportant to 
Woman that even this species of equality was awarded 
her. Before, she could be condemned to perish on 
the scaffold for treason, not as a citizen, but as a 
subject. The right with which this title then in- 
vested a human being was that of bloodshed and 
license. The Goddess of Liberty was impure. As 
we read the poem addressed to her, not long since, 
by Beranger, we can scarcely refrain from tears as 
painful as the tears of blood that flowed when '^such 
crimes were committed in her name." Yes! Man, 
born to purify and animate the unintelligent and 
the cold, can, in his madness, degrade and pollute 
no less the fair and the chaste. Yet truth was 
prophesied in the ravings of that hideous fever, 
caused by long ignorance and abuse. Europe is 
conning a valued lesson from the blood-stained page. 
The same tendencies, further unfolded, will bear 
good fruit in this country. ... 

Here, as elsewhere, the gain of creation consists 
always in the growth of individual minds, which 
live and aspire, as flowers bloom and birds sing, in the 



144 ^EST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

midst of morasses; and in the continual develop- 
ment of that thought, the thought of human destiny, 
which is given to eternity adequately to express, and 
which ages of failure only seemingly impede. Only 
seemingly; and whatever seems to the contrary, this 
country is as surely destined to elucidate a great 
moral law, as Europe was to promote the mental 
culture of Man. 

Though the national independence be blurred by 
the serviUty of individuals; though freedom and 
equality have been proclaimed only to leave room for 
a monstrous display of slave-dealing and slave-keep- 
ing; though the free American so often feels himself 
free, like the Roman, only to pamper his appetites 
and his indolence through the misery of his fellow- 
beings; still it is not in vain that the verbal state- 
ment has been made, ^^All men are born free and 
equal.'' There it stands, a golden certainty where- 
with to encourage the good, to shame the bad. . . . 

Of all its banners [those of the triumphal procession 
of Freedom], none has been more steadily upheld, 
and under none have more valor and willingness for 
real sacrifices been shown, than that of the champions 
of the enslaved African. And this band it is, which, 
partly from a natural following out of principles, 
partly because many women have been prominent 
in that cause, makes, just now, the warmest appeal 
in behalf of Woman. . . . 

The numerous party, whose opinions are already 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 145 

labeled and adjusted too much to their mind to admit 
of any new light, strive, by lectures on some model- 
woman of bride-like beauty and gentleness, by writing 
and lending little treatises, intended to mark out with 
precision the limits of Woman's sphere, and Woman's 
mission, to prevent other than the rightful shepherd 
from climbing the wall, or the flock from using any 
chance to go astray. 

Without enrolling ourselves at once on either side, 
let us look upon the subject from the best point of 
view to-day which offers; no better, it is to be feared, 
than a high house-top. A high hill-top, or at least 
a cathedral spire, would be desirable. 

It may well be an Anti-Slavery party that pleads for 
Woman, if we consider merely that she does not hold 
property on equal terms with men; so that, if a 
husband dies without making a will, the wife, in- 
stead of taking at once his place as head of the family, 
inherits only a part of his fortune, often brought him 
by herself, as if she were a child, or ward only, not 
an equal partner. 

We will not speak of the innumerable instances in 
which profligate and idle men live upon the earnings 
of industrious wives; or if the wives leave them, and 
take with them the children, to perform the double 
duty of mother and father, follow from place to place, 
and threaten to rob them of the children, if deprived 
of the rights of a husband, as they call them, planting 
themselves in their poor lodgings, frightening them 



146 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

into paying tribute by taking from them the children, 
running into debt at the expense of these otherwise 
so overtasked helots. Such instances count up by 
scores within my own memory. I have seen the 
husband who had stained himself by a long course 
of low vice, till his wife was wearied from her heroic 
forgiveness, by finding that his treachery made it 
useless, and that if she would provide bread for 
herself and her children, she must be separate from 
his ill fame — I have known this man come to install 
himself in the chamber of a woman who loathed him, 
and say she should never take food without his 
company. I have known these men steal their 
children, whom they knew they had no means to 
maintain, take them into dissolute company, expose 
them to bodily danger, to frighten the poor woman, 
to whom, it seems, the fact that she alone had borne 
the pangs of their birth, and nourished their infancy, 
does not give an equal right to them. I do believe 
that this mode of kidnapping — and it is frequent 
enough in all classes of society — will be by the next 
age viewed as it is by Heaven now, and that the man 
who avails himself of the shelter of men's laws to 
steal from a mother her own children, or arrogate 
any superior right in them, save that of superior 
virtue, will bear the stigma he deserves, in common 
with him who steals grown men from their mother- 
land, their hopes, and their homes. . . . 
But to return to the historical progress of this 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI I47 

matter. Knowing that there exists in the minds 
of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward 
slaves, such as is expressed in the common phrase, 
*'Tell that to women and children''; that the in- 
finite soul can only work through them in already 
ascertained limits; that the gift of reason, Man's 
highest prerogative, is allotted to them in much 
lower degree; that they must be kept from mis- 
chief and melancholy b}^ being constantly engaged in 
active labor, which is to be furnished and directed by 
those better able to think, etc., etc., — we need not 
multiply instances, for who can review the experience 
of last week without recaUing words which imply, 
whether in jest of earnest, these views or views like 
these, — knowing this, can we wonder that many 
reformers think that measures are not likely to be 
taken in behalf of women, unless their wishes could 
be publicly represented by women? 

^^That can never be necessary," cry the other side. 
"All men are privately influenced by women; each 
has his wife, sister, or female friends, and is too much 
biased by these relations to fail of representing their 
interests; and, if this is not enough, let them pro- 
pose and enforce their wishes with the pen. The 
beauty of home would be destroyed, the delicacy 
of the sex be violated, the dignity of halls of legisla- 
tion degraded, by an attempt to introduce them 
there. Such duties are inconsistent with those of 
a mother;" and then we have ludicrous pictures 



148 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

of ladies in hysterics at the polls, and senate-chambers 
filled with cradles. 

But if, in reply, we admit as truth that Woman 
seems destined by nature rather for the inner circle, 
we must add that the arrangements of civilized life 
have not been, as yet, such as to secure it to her. 
Her circle, if the duller, is not the quieter. If kept 
from ^'excitement," she is not from drudgery. Not 
only the Indian squaw carries the burdens of the 
camp, but the favorites of Louis XIV. accompany him 
in his journeys, and the washerwoman stands at her 
tub, and carries home her work at all seasons, and in 
all states of health. Those who think the physical 
circumstances of Woman would make a part in the 
affairs of national government unsuitable, are by 
no means those w^ho think it impossible for negr esses 
to endure field-work, even during pregnancy, or for 
sempstresses to go through their killing labors. 

As to the use of the pen, there was quite as much 
opposition to Woman's possessing herself of that help 
to free agency as there is now to her seizing on the 
rostrum or the desk ; and she is likely to draw, from 
a permission to plead her cause that way, opposite 
inferences to what might be wished by those who 
now grant it. 

As to the possibility of her filling with grace and 
dignity any such position,we should think those who 
had seen the great actresses, and heard the Quaker 
preachers of modern times, would not doubt that 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI 149 

Woman can express publicly the fullness of thought 
and creation, without losing any of the peculiar 
beauty of her sex. What can pollute and tarnish, 
is to act thus from any motive except that some- 
thing needs to be said or done. Woman could take 
part in the processions, the songs, the dances of old 
religion; no one fancied her delicacy was impaired 
by appearing in public for such a cause. 

As to her home, she is not likely to leave it more 
than she now does for balls, theaters, meetings for 
promoting missions, revival meetings, and others 
to which she flies, in hope of an animation for her 
existence commensurate with that she sees enjoyed 
by men. Governors of ladies' fairs are no less en- 
grossed by such a charge, than the governor of a 
state by his; presidents of Washingtonian societies 
no less away from home than presidents of conven- 
tions. If men look straitly to it, they will find that, 
unless their lives are domestic, those of the women 
will not be. A house is no home unless it contain 
food and fire for the mind as well as for the body. 
The female Greek, of our day, is as much in the street 
as the male to cry, ^' What news?'' We doubt not it 
was the same in Athens of old. The women, shut 
out from the market-place, made up for it at the 
religious festivals. For human beings are not so 
constituted that they can live without expansion. 
If they do not get it in one way, they must in another, 
or perish. 



150 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

As to men's representing women fairly at present, 
while we hear from men who owe to their wives not 
only all that is comfortable or graceful, but all that 
is wise, in the arrangement of their lives, the frequent 
remark, ^^You cannot reason with a woman," — 
when from those of delicacy, nobleness, and poetic 
culture falls the contemptuous phrase ^' women and 
children," and that in no light sally of the hour, but 
in works intended to give a permanent statement 
of the best experiences, — when not one man, in the 
million, shall I say? no, not in the hundred million, 
can rise above the belief that Woman was made for 
Man, — when such traits as these are daily forced 
upon the attention, can we feel that Man will always 
do justice to the interests of Woman? Can we 
think that he takes a sufficiently discerning and reli- 
gious view of her office and destiny ever to do her 
justice, except when prompted by sentiment, — ac- 
cidentally or transiently, that is, for the sentiment 
will vary according to the relations in which he is 
placed ? The lover, the poet, the artist, are likely 
to view her nobly. The father and the philosopher 
have some chance of liberality; the man of the world, 
the legislator for expediency, none. 

Under these circumstances, without attaching im- 
portance, in themselves, to the changes demanded 
by the champions of Woman, we hail them as signs 
of the times. We would have every arbitrary barrier 
thrown down. We would have every path laid open 



SARAH MARGARET FULLER OSSOLI I51 

to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and 
a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, 
we should see crystallizations more pure and of 
more various beauty. We believe the divine energy 
would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the 
history of former ages, and that no discordant colli- 
sion, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would 
ensue. 

Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for 
this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman 
as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, 
not yielded as a concession. As the friend of the 
negro assumes that one man cannot by right hold 
another in bondage, so should the friend of Woman 
assume that Man cannot by right lay even well- 
meant restrictions on Woman. If the negro be a 
soul, if the woman be a soul, appareled in flesh, to 
one Master only are they accountable. There is 
but one law for souls, and if there is to be an in- 
.terpreter of it, he must come not as man, or son 
of man, but as son of God. 

Were thought and feeling once so far elevated that 
Man should esteem himself the brother and friend, 
but nowise the lord and tutor, of Woman, — were he 
really bound with her in equal worship, — arrange- 
ments as to function and employment would be of 
no consequence. What Woman needs is not as a 
woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an 
intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and 



152 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

unimpeded, to unfold such powers as were given her 
when we left our common home. If fewer talents 
were given her, yet if allowed the free and full em- 
ployment of these, so that she may render back to 
the giver his own with usury, she will not complain; 
nay, I dare to say she will bless and rejoice in her 
earthly birth-place, her earthly lot. ... 
1 It is not Woman, but the law of right, the law of 
growth, that speaks in us, and demands the perfec- 
tion of each being in its kind — apple as apple. 
Woman as Woman. Without adopting your theory, 
I know that I, a daughter, live through the life of 
Man; but what concerns me now is, that my life be a 
beautiful, powerful, in a word, a complete life in its 
kind. Had I but one more moment to live I must 
wish the same. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 

1817-1862 



ThOreau was one of the Transcendental School of writers. 
He was born in Concord, Massachusetts. After his gradua- 
tion at Harvard, and some experience in school-teaching and 
land-surveying, he settled in his native town and became inti- 
mate with Emerson, Alcott, and their circle. A man of 
intense individuality and a large conceit, he was nevertheless 
so impressed by Emerson that in his writings, which became 
frequent, he took on, perhaps unconsciously, much of the 
Emersonian style. Yet he was a freakish original, lived for 
years alone in a lodge he built in the woods, and wrote of his life 
and experiences there in a delightful book entitled "Walden." 
From this, the essay or chapter on "Solitude" — the charms 
of which he had sought in his experiment — is here reprinted. 

It has been said that while Thoreau received much from 
Emerson, Emerson owed to Thoreau the unsealing of his 
eyes to the wonders and beauties of nature; if so, the world 
also owes much to Thoreau. 

Thoreau wrote often for the periodicals, and his writings 
were gathered into volumes: "A Week on the Concord 
and Merrimac Rivers," ''Cape Cod," ''The Maine Woods," 
and others. His love of nature was sincere, his knowledge of 
it intimate and almost boundless, his descriptions of it, and of 
the animated life that peopled its wilds were graphic and 
picturesque, and the reflections on man, society, government, 
art, literature, and a multitude of topics, that his philosophic 
and poetic soul conceived, make his writings unusually sug- 
gestive to the thoughtful reader. 



154 



SOLITUDE 

This is a delicious evening, when the whole body is 
one sense, and imbibes delight through every pore. 
I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature, a 
part of herself. As I walk along the stony shore of 
the pond in my shirt-sleeves, though it is cool as well 
as cloudy and windy, and I see nothing special to at- 
tract me, all the elements are unusually congenial to 
me. The bullfrogs trump to usher in the night, and 
the note of the whippoorwill is borne on the rippling 
wind from over the water. Sympathy with the flut- 
tering alder and poplar leaves almost takes away my 
breath; yet, like the lake, my serenity is rippled but 
not ruffled. These small waves raised by the even- 
ing wind are as remote from storm as the smooth re- 
flecting surface. Though it is now dark, the wind 
still blows and roars in the wood, the waves still dash, 
and some creatures lull the rest with their note?. 
The repose is never complete. The wildest animals 
do not repose, but seek their prey now; the fox, and 
skunk, and rabbit now roam the fields and woods 
without fear. They are Nature's watchmen, — 
links which connect the days of animated life. 

When I return to my house I find that visitors have 
been there and left their cards, either a bunch of 

155 



156 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

flowers, or a wreath of evergreen, or a name in pencil 
on a yellow walnut leaf or a chip. They who come 
rarely to the woods take some little piece of the for- 
est into their hands to play with by the way, which 
they leave, either intentionally or accidentally. One 
has peeled a willow wand, woven it into a ring, and 
dropped it on my table. I could always tell if visitors 
had called in my absence, either by the bended twigs 
or grass, or the print of their shoes, and generally of 
what sex or age or quality they were by some slight 
trace left, as a flower dropped, or a bunch of grass 
plucked and thrown away, even as far off as the rail- 
road, half a mile distant, or by the lingering odor of 
a cigar or pipe. Nay, I was frequently notified of the 
passage of a traveler along the highway sixty rods 
off by the scent of his pipe. 

There is commonly sufficient space about us. Our 
horizon is never quite at our elbows. The thick 
wood is not just at our door, nor the pond, but some- 
what is always clearing, famihar and worn by us, ap- 
propriated and fenced in some way, and reclaimed 
from Nature. For what reason have I this vast 
range and circuit, some square miles of unfrequented 
forest, for my privacy, abandoned to me by men? 
My nearest neighbor is a mile distant, and no house 
is visible from any place but the hilltops within half 
a mile of my own. I have my horizon bounded by 
woods all to myself; a distant view of the railroad 
where it touches the pond on the one hand, and of 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 1 57 

the fence which skirts the woodland road on the 
other. But for the most part it is as soHtary where I 
live as on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa 
as New England. I have, as it were, my own sun and 
moon and stars, and a little world all to myself. At 
night there was never a traveler passed my house, or 
knocked at my door, more than if I were the first or 
last man; unless it were in the spring, when at long 
intervals some came from the village to fish for pouts, 
— they plainly fished much more in the Walden Pond 
of their own natures, and baited their hooks with 
darkness, — but they soon retreated, usually with 
light baskets, and left ^'the world to darkness and to 
me,'' and the black kernel of the night was never 
profaned by any human neighborhood. I believe 
that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, 
though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and 
candles have been introduced. 

Yet I experienced sometimes that the most sweet 
and tender, the most innocent and encouraging so- 
ciety may be found in any natural object, even for the 
poor misanthrope and most melancholy man. There 
can be no very black melancholy to him who lives in 
the midst of Nature and has his senses still. There 
was never yet such a storm but it was ^Eolian music 
to a healthy and innocent ear. Nothing can rightly 
compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness. 
While I enjoy the friendship of the seasons I trust 
that nothing can make life a burden to me. The 



158 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

gentle rain which waters my beans and keeps me in 
the house to-day is not drear and melancholy, but 
good for me, too. Though it prevents my hoeing 
them, it is of far more worth than my hoeing. If it 
should continue so long as to cause the seeds to rot 
in the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low 
lands, it would still be good for the grass on the up- 
lands, and, being good for the grass, it would be 
good for me. Sometimes, when I compare myself 
with other men, it seems as if I were more favored 
by the gods than they, beyond any deserts that I am 
conscious of; as if I had a warrant and surety at 
their hands which my fellows have not, and were 
especially guided and guarded. I do not flatter my- 
self, but if it be possible they flatter me. I have never 
felt lonesome, or in the least oppressed by a sense of 
solitude, but once, and that was a few weeks after I 
came to the woods, when, for an hour, I doubted if the 
near neighborhood of man was not essential to a 
serene and healthy life. To be alone was something 
unpleasant. But I was at the same time conscious of 
a slight insanity in my mood, and seemed to foresee my 
recovery. In the midst of a gentle rain while these 
thoughts prevailed, I was suddenly sensible of such 
sweet and beneficent society in Nature, in the very 
pattering of the drops, and in every sound and sight 
around my house, an infinite and unaccountable 
friendliness all at once like an atmosphere sustaining 
me, as made the fancied advantages of human neigh- 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 159 

borhood insignificant, and I have never thought of 
them since. Every httle pine-needle expanded and 
swelled with sympathy and befriended me. I was so 
distinctly made aware of the presence of something 
kindred to me, even in scenes which we are accus- 
tomed to call wild and dreary, and also that the near- 
est of blood to me and humanest was not a person 
nor a villager, that I thought no place could ever be 
strange to me again. — 

*' Mourning untimely consumes the sad; 
Few are their days in the land of the living, 
Beautiful daughter of Toscar." 

Some of my pleasantest hours were during the long 
rain storms in the spring or fall, which confined me 
to the house for the afternoon as well as the forenoon, 
soothed by their ceaseless roar and pelting; when an 
early twilight ushered in a long evening in which 
many thoughts had time to take root and unfold 
themselves. In those driving northeast rains which 
tried the village houses so, when the maids stood 
ready with mop and pail in front entries to keep the 
deluge out, I sat behind my door in my little house, 
which was all entry, and thoroughly enjoyed its pro- 
tection. In one heavy thunder shower the lightning 
struck a large pitch pine across the pond, making a 
very conspicuous and perfectly regular spiral groove 
from top to bottom, an inch or more deep, and four or 
five inches wide, as you would groove a walking-stick. 



l6o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

I passed it again the other day, and was struck with 
awe on looking up and beholding that mark, now more 
distinct than ever, where a terrific and resistless bolt 
came down out of the harmless sky eight years ago. 
Men frequently say to me, ^^ I should think you would 
feel lonesome down there, and want to be nearer to 
folks, rainy and snowy days and nights especially." 
I am tempted to reply to such, — This whole earth 
which we inhabit is but a point in space. How far 
apart, think you, dwell the two most distant inhabit- 
ants of yonder star, the breadth of whose disk cannot 
be appreciated by our instruments ? Why should I 
feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way? 
This which you put seems to me not to be the most 
important question. What sort of space is that 
which separates a man from his fellows and makes 
him solitary ? I have found that no exertion of the 
legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another. 
What do we want most to dwell near to? Not to 
many men surely, the depot, the post-office, the bar- 
room, the meeting-house, the school-house, the 
grocery. Beacon Hill, or the Five Points, where men 
most congregate, but to the perennial source of our 
life, whence in all our experience we have found that 
to issue, as the willow stands near the water and sends 
out its roots in that direction. This will vary with 
different natures, but this is the place where a wise 
man will dig his cellar. ... 

'^ How vast and profound is the influence of the sub- 
tile powers of Heaven and of Earth!'' 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU l6l 

'^We seek to perceive them, and we do not see 
them; we seek to hear them, and we do not hear 
them; identified with the substance of things, they 
cannot be separated from them.'' 

'^ They cause that in all the universe men purify and 
sanctify their hearts, and clothe themselves in their 
holiday garments to offer sacrifices and oblations to 
their ancestors. It is an ocean of subtile intelligences. 
They are everywhere, above us, on our left, on our 
right; they environ us on all sides.'' . . . 

With thinking, we maybe beside ourselves in a sane 
sense. By a conscious effort of the mind we can stand 
aloof from actions and their consequences; and all 
things, good and bad, go by us Uke a torrent. We 
are not wholly involved in Nature. I may be either 
the driftwood in the stream, or Indra in the sky look- 
ing down on it. I may be affected by a theatrical 
exhibition; on the other hand, I may not be affected 
by an actual event which appears to concern me much 
more. I only know myself as a human entity; the 
scene, so to speak, of thoughts and affections; and 
am sensible of a certain doubleness by which I can 
stand as remote from mys^f as from another. How- 
ever intense my experience, I am conscious of the 
presence of and criticism of a part of me, which, as it 
were, is not a part of me, but spectator, sharing no 
experience, but taking note of it ; and that is no more 
I than it is you. When the play, it may be the 
tragedy, of life is over, the spectator goes his way. 



1 62 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

It was a kind of fiction, a work of the imagination only, 
so far as he was concerned. This doubleness may 
easily make us poor neighbors and friends sometimes. 
I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of 
the time. To be in company, even with the best, is 
soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. 
I never found the companion that was so companion- 
able as solitude. We are for the most part more 
lonely when we go abroad among men than when we 
stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is 
always alone, let him be where he will. SoUtude is 
not measured by the miles of space that intervene be- 
tween a man and his fellows. The really diligent 
student in one of the crowded hives of Cambridge 
College is as soHtary as a dervish in the desert. The 
farmer can work alone in the field or the woods all day, 
hoeing or chopping, and not feel lonesome, because he 
is employed; but when he comes home at night he 
cannot sit down in a room alone, at the mercy of his 
thoughts, but must be where he can ^'see the folks," 
and recreate, and as he thinks remunerate, himself for 
his -day's soHtude; and hence he wonders how the 
student can sit alone in the house all night and most 
of the day without ennui and "the blues"; but he 
does not realize that the student, though in the house, 
is still at work in his field, and chopping in his w^oods, 
as the farmer in his, and in turn seeks the same recre- 
ation and society that the latter does, though it may 
be a more condensed form of it. 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 163 

Society is commonly too cheap. We meet at very 
short intervals, not having had time to acquire any 
new value for each other. We meet at meals three 
times a day, and give each other a new taste of that 
old musty cheese that we are. We have to agree on 
a certain set of rules, called etiquette and politeness, 
to make this frequent meeting tolerable and that we 
need not come to open war. We meet at the post- 
office, and at the sociable, and about the fireside 
every night; we live thick and are in each other's 
way, and stumble over one another, and I think that 
we thus lose some respect for one another. Cer- 
tainly less frequency would suflfice for all important 
and hearty communications. Consider the girls in 
a factory, — never alone, hardly in their dreams. 
It would be better if there were but one inhabitant 
to a square mile, as where I live. The value of a 
man is not in his skin, that we should touch him. 

I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying 
of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, 
whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions 
with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased 
imagination surrounded him, and which he believed 
to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental 
health and strength, we may be continually cheered 
by a like but more normal and natural society, and 
come to know that we are never alone. 

I have a great deal of company in my house; es- 
pecially in the morning, when nobody calls. Let me 



164 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

suggest a few comparisons, that some one may convey 
an idea of my situation. I am no more lonely than 
the loon in the pond that laughs so loud, or than 
Walden Pond itself. What company has that lonely 
lake, I pray? And yet it has not the blue devils, 
but the blue angels in it, in the azure tint of its waters. 
The sun is alone, except in thick weather, when there 
sometimes appear to be two, but one is a mock sun. 
God is alone, — but the devil, he is far from being 
alone; he sees a great deal of company; he is legion. 
I am no more lonely than a single mullein or dande- 
lion in a pasture, or a bean leaf, or sorrel, or a horse- 
fly, or a bumblebee. I am no more lonely than the 
Mill Brook, or a weathercock, or the north star, or 
the south wind, or an April shower, or a January 
thaw, or the first spider in a new house. 

I have occasional visits in the long winter evenings, 
when the snow falls fast and the wind howls in the 
wood, from an old settler and original proprietor, who 
is reported to have dug Walden Pond, and stoned it, 
and fringed it with pine woods; who tell me stories 
of old time and of new eternity; and between us we 
manage to pass a cheerful evening with social mirth 
and pleasant views of things, even without apples or 
cider, — a most wise and humorous friend, whom I 
love much, who keeps himself more secret than ever 
did Goffe or Whalley ; and though he is thought to be 
dead, none can show where he is buried. An elderly 
dame, too, dwells in my neighborhood, invisible to 



HENRY DAVID THOREAU 165 

most persons, in whose odorous herb garden I love 
to stroll sometimes, gathering simples and listening to 
her fables; for she has a genius of unequaled fertility, 
and her memory runs back farther than mythology, 
and she can tell me the original of every fable, and on 
what fact every one is founded, for the incidents oc- 
curred'when she was young. A ruddy and lusty old 
dame, who delights in all weathers and seasons, and 
is likely to outlive all her children yet. 

The indescribable innocence and beneficence of 
Nature, — of sun and wind and rain, of summer and 
winter, — such health, such cheer, they afford for- 
ever! and such sympathy have they ever with our 
race, that all Nature would be affected, and the sun's 
brightness fade, and the winds would sigh humanely, 
and the clouds rain tears, and the woods shed their 
leaves and put on mourning in midsummer, if any 
man should ever for a just cause grieve. Shall I 
not have intelligence with the earth? Am I not 
partly leaves and vegetable mold myself ? 

What is the pill which will keep us well, serene, 
contented ? Not my or thy great-grandfather's, but 
our great-grandmother Nature's universal, vegetable, 
botanic medicines, by which she has kept herself 
young always, outlived so many old Parrs in her day, 
and fed her health with their decaying fatness. For 
my panacea, instead of one of those quack vials of a 
mixture dipped from Acheron and the Dead Sea, 
which come out of those long, shallow, black-schooner- 



1 66 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

looking wagons which we sometimes see made to 
carry bottles, let me have a draught of undiluted 
morning air. Morning air! If men will not drink of 
this at the fountain-head of the day, why, then, we 
must even bottle up some and sell it in the shops, for 
the benefit of those who have lost their subscription 
ticket to morning time in this world. But remember, 
it will not keep quite till noonday even in the coolest 
cellar, but drive out the stopples long ere that and 
follow westward the steps of Aurora. I am no 
worshiper of Hygeia, who was the daughter of that 
old herb-doctor iEsculapius, and who is represented 
on monuments holding a serpent in one hand, and in 
the other a cup of which the serpent sometimes 
drinks; but rather of Hebe, cupbearer to Jupiter, who 
was the daughter of Juno and wild lettuce, and who 
had the power of restoring gods and men to the vigor 
of youth. She was probably the only thoroughly 
sound-conditioned, healthy, and robust young lady 
that ever walked the globe, and wherever she came it 
was spring. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

r 
I 804-1 864 



Born in Salem — a town saturated with historical and 
legendary romance of earlier and darker days — Hawthorne 
was from boyhood shy, sensitive, given to introspection and 
love of solitude. Even after a college career, he lived for 
nearly ten years with his mother in her lonely Salem house, 
considering what profession he was fit for. 

Yet here his profession found him : he began writing — • 
sketches, tales, essays — and, although he burned more than 
he published, he was in training for better work. Many of these 
writings were printed in obscure periodicals, and formed his 
first book of gathered fruits, ''Twice-told Tales" (1837). In 
1841 he joined for a while the Brook Farm Community, his 
experiences there developing later into ''The Blithedale Ro- 
mance." Marrying, in 1842, he removed to the old Emerson 
house in Concord, whence his "Mosses from an Old Manse." 
The year 1846 interrupted his writing with a position in the 
Salem Custom House, but when, in 1849, political changes lost 
him that, he set about a larger and more serious work, one 
long brooded, "The Scarlet Letter" (1850), that romance of 
retribution, which put him instantly at the head of Ameri- 
can writers of fiction. Then rapidly followed "The House 
of the Seven Gables " (1851), and "The Blithedale Romance " 
(1852) ; and, after seven years in Europe, four as United States 
Consul at Liverpool and three spent in travel, came his last 
finished romance "The Marble Faun" (i860), in England 
called *' Transformation." Besides these four strongest works, 
Hawthorne wrote many mysteriously delightful sketches and 
tales, and several charming volumes for children — "The Won- 
der-Book," "Grandfather's Chair," "Tanglewood Tales," etc. 

The pure perfection of Hawthorne's style is most alluring, 
while his brilliant imagination, delicate humor, mastery of the 
weird and supernatural, and intimate knowledge of the human 
heart complete his control of the reader. 



168 



FIRE-WORSHIP 

It is a great revolution in social and domestic life 
— and no less so in the life of the secluded student — 
this almost universal exchange of the open fireplace 
for the cheerless and ungenial stove. On such a 
morning as now lowers around our old gray parsonage, 
I miss the bright face of my ancient friend, who was 
wont to dance upon the hearth, and play the part of a 
more familiar sunshine. It is sad to turn from the 
cloudy sky and somber landscape — from yonder hill, 
with its crown of rusty, black pines, the foliage of 
which is so dismal in the absence of the sun; that 
bleak pasture land, and the broken surface of the 
potato field, with the brown clods partly concealed by 
the snowfall of last night; the swollen and sluggish 
river, with ice-incrusted borders, dragging its bluish- 
gray stream along the verge of our orchard, like a 
snake half torpid with the cold — it is sad to turn 
from an outward scene of so little comfort, and find 
the same sullen influences brooding within the pre- 
cincts of my study. Where is that brilliant guest — 
that quick and subtle spirit whom Prometheus lured 
from Heaven to civiUze mankind, and cheer them 
in their wintry desolation — that comfortable inmate, 
whose smile, during eight months of the year, was 

169 



170 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

our sufficient consolation for summer's lingering 
advance and early flight? Alas! blindly inhospi- 
table, grudging the food that kept him cheery and 
mercurial, we have thrust him into an iron prison, and 
compel him to smolder away his life on a daily pit- 
tance which once would have been too scanty for 
his breakfast! Without a metaphor, we now make 
our fire in an air-tight stove, and supply it with some 
half-a-dozen sticks of wood between dawn and night- 
fall. 

I never shall be reconciled to this enormity. Truly 
may it be said, that the world looks darker for it. In 
one way or another, here and there, and all around 
us, the inventions of mankind are fast blotting the 
picturesque, the poetic, and the beautiful out of 
human life. The domestic fire was a t3rpe of all these 
attributes, and seemed to bring might and majesty, 
and wild Nature, and a spiritual essence, into our in- 
most home, and yet to dwell with us in such friendli- 
ness, that its mysteries and marvels excited no dis- 
may. The same mild companion, that smiled so 
placidly in our faces, was he that comes roaring out of 
-^tna, and rushes madly up the sky, like a fiend 
breaking loose from torment, and fighting for a place 
among the upper angels. He it is, too, that leaps 
from cloud to cloud amid the crashing thunder- 
storm. It was he whom the Gheber worshiped, with 
no unnatural idolatry; and it was he who devoured 
London and Moscow, and many another famous city, 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 171 

and' who loves to riot through our own dark forests, 
and sweep across our prairies, and to whose ravenous 
maw, it is said, the universe shall one day be given as 
a final feast. Meanwhile he is the great artisan 
and laborer by whose aid men are enabled to build a 
world within a world, or, at least, to smooth down 
the rough creation which Nature flung to us. He 
forges the mighty anchor, and every lesser instrument. 
He drives the steamboat and drags the rail car. 
And it was he — this creature of terrible might, 
and so many-sided utility, and all-comprehensive 
destructiveness — that used to be the cheerful, 
homely friend of our wintry days, and whom we have 
made the prisoner of this iron cage! 

How kindly he was, and, though the tremendous 
agent of change, yet bearing himself with such gentle- 
ness, so rendering himself a part of all lifelong and 
age-coeval associations, that it seemed as if he were 
the great conservative of Nature! While a man was 
true to the fireside, so long would he be true to coun- 
try and law — to the God whom his fathers wor- 
shiped — to the wife of his youth — and to all things 
else which instinct or religion have taught us to 
consider sacred. With how sweet humility did this 
elemental spirit perform all needful offices for the 
household in which he was domesticated! He was 
equal to the concoction of a grand dinner, yet scorned 
not to roast a potato, or toast a bit of cheese. How 
humanely did he cherish the schoolboy's icy fingers, 



172 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

and thaw the old man's joints with a genial warmth, 
which almost equaled the glow of youth ! And how 
carefully did he dry the cowhide boots that had 
trudged through mud and snow, and the shaggy out- 
side garment, stiff with frozen sleet; taking heed, 
likewise, to the comfort of the faithful dog who had 
followed his master through the storm! When did 
he refuse a coal to light a pipe, or even a part of his 
own substance to kindle a neighbor's fire? And 
then, at twilight, when laborer or scholar, or mortal 
of whatever age, sex, or degree, drew a chair beside 
him, and looked into his glowing face, how acute, how 
profound, how comprehensive was his sympathy 
with the mood of each and all! He pictured forth 
their very thoughts. To the youthful he showed 
the scenes of the adventurous life before them; to 
the aged, the shadows of departed love and hope; 
and, if all earthly things had grown distasteful, he 
could gladden the fireside muser with golden glimpses 
of a better world. And, amid this varied communion 
with the human soul, how busily would the sym- 
pathizer, the deep moralist, the painter of magic 
pictures, be causing the tea-kettle to boil! 

Nor did it lessen the charm of his soft, familiar 
courtesy and helpfulness, that the mighty spirit, were 
opportunity offered him, would run riot through the 
peaceful house, wrap its inmates in his terrible em- 
brace, and leave nothing of them save their whitened 
bones. This possibility of mad destruction only 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 173 

made his domestic kindness the more beautiful and 
touching. It was so sweet of him, being endowed 
with such power, to dwell, day after day, and one long, 
lonesome night after another, on the dusky hearth, 
only now and then betraying his wild nature by 
thrusting his red tongue out of the chimney-top! 
True, he had done much mischief in the world, and 
was pretty certain to do more; but his warm heart 
atoned for all. He was kindly to the race of man; 
and they pardoned his characteristic imperfections. 

The good old clergyman, my predecessor in this 
mansion, was well acquainted with the comforts of the 
fireside. His yearly allowance of wood, according 
to the terms of his settlement, was no less than sixty 
cords. Almost an annual forest was converted from 
sound oak logs into ashes, in the kitchen, the parlor, 
and this little study, where now an unworthy succes- 
sor — not in the pastoral office, but merely in his 
earthly abode — sits scribbling beside an air-tight 
stove. I love to fancy one of those fireside days, 
while the good man, a contemporary of the Revolu- 
tion, was in his early prime, some five-and-sixty 
years ago. Before sunrise, doubtless, the blaze 
hovered upon the gray skirts of night, and dissolved 
the frostwork that had gathered like a curtain over 
the small window-panes. There is something pe- 
culiar in the aspect of the morning fireside ; a fresher, 
brisker glare; the absence of that mellowness, which 
can be produced only by half-consumed logs, and 



174 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

shapeless brands with the white ashes on them, and 
mighty coals, the remnant of tree trunks that the 
hungry elements have gnawed for hours. The 
morning hearth, too, is newly swept, and the brazen 
andirons well brightened, so that the cheerful fire 
may see its face in them. Surely it was happiness, 
when the pastor, fortified with a substantial break- 
fast, sat down in his armchair and slippers, and 
opened the Whole Body of Divinity, or the Com- 
mentary on Job, or whichever of his old folios or 
quartos might fall within the range of his weekly 
sermons. It must have been his own fault, if the 
warmth and glow of this abundant hearth did not 
permeate the discourse, and keep his audience com- 
fortable, in spite of the bitterest northern blast that 
ever wrestled with the church steeple. He reads, 
while the heat warps the stiff covers of the volume; 
he writes without numbness either in his heart or 
fingers; and, with unstinted hand, he throws fresh 
sticks of wood upon the fire. 

A parishioner comes in. With what warmth of 
benevolence — how should he be otherwise than 
warm, in any of his attributes? — does the minister bid 
him welcome, and set a chair for him in so close prox- 
imity to the hearth, that soon the guest finds it need- 
ful to rub his scorched shins with his great red hands. 
The melted snow drips from his steaming boots, 
and bubbles upon the hearth. His puckered fore- 
head unravels its entanglement of crisscross wrinkles. 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 175; 

We lose much of the enjoyment of fireside heat, with- 
out such an opportunity of marking its genial effect, 
upon those who have been looking the inclement, 
weather in the face. In the course of the day our 
clergyman himself strides forth, perchance to pa}^ a. 
round of pastoral visits, or, it may be, to visit his. 
mountain of a wood-pile, and cleave the monstrous, 
logs into billets suitable for the fire. He returns with; 
fresher life to his beloved hearth. During the short, 
afternoon, the western sunshine comes into the study,, 
and strives to stare the ruddy blaze out of counte- 
nance, but with only a brief triumph, soon to be suc- 
ceeded by brighter glories of its rival. Beautiful it. 
is to see the strengthening gleam — the deepening; 
light — that gradually casts distinct shadows of the; 
human figure, the table, and the high-backed chairs,, 
upon the opposite wall, and at length, as twilight 
comes on, replenishes the room with living radiance,, 
and makes life all rose-color. Afar, the wayfarer 
discerns the flickering flame, as it dances upon the 
windows, and hails it as a beacon light of humanity, 
reminding him, in his cold and lonely path, that the 
world is not all snow, and solitude, and desolation. 
At eventide, probably , the study was peopled with the 
clergyman's wife and family; and children tumbled 
themselves upon the hearth-rug, and grave Puss sat 
with her back to the fire, or gazed, with a semblance 
of human meditation, into its fervid depths. Sea- 
sonably, the plenteous ashes of the day were raked 



176 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

over the moldering brands, and from the heap came 
jets of flame, and an incense of night-long smoke, 
creeping quietly up the chimney. 

Heaven forgive the old clergyman! In his later 
life, when, for almost ninety winters, he had been 
gladdened by the fireUght — when it had gleamed 
upon him from infancy to extreme age, and never 
without brightening his spirits as well as his visage, 
and perhaps keeping him alive so long — he had the 
heart to brick up his chimney-place, and bid farewell 
to the face of his old friend forever! Why did not he 
take an eternal leave of the sunshine too ? His sixty 
cords of wood had probably dwindled to a far less 
ample supply, in modern times; and it is certain that 
the parsonage had grown crazy with time and tem- 
pest, and pervious to the cold; but still, it was one of 
the saddest tokens of the decline and fall of open fire- 
places, that the gray patriarch should have deigned 
to warm himself at an air-tight stove. 

And I, Ukewdse — who have found a home in this 
ancient owl's nest, since its former occupant took his 
heavenward flight — I, to my shame, have put up 
stoves in kitchen, and parlor, and chamber. Wander 
where you will about the house, not a gUmpse of the 
earth-born, heaven-aspiring fiend of iEtna — him 
that sports in the thunder-storm — the idol of the 
Ghebers — the devourer of cities, the forest-rioter, 
and prairie-sweeper — the future destroyer of our 
earth — the old chimney-corner companion, who 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 177 

mingled himself so sociably with household joys 
and sorrows — not a glimpse of this mighty and 
kindly one will greet your eyes. He is now an invisible 
presence. There is his iron cage. Touch it, and 
he scorches your fingers. He delights to singe a 
garment, or perpetrate any other little unworthy 
mischief; for his temper is ruined by the ingratitude 
of mankind, for whom he cherished such warmth of 
feeling, and to whom he taught all their arts, even that 
of making his own prison-house. In his fits of rage, 
he puffs volumes of smok^ and noisome gas through 
the crevices of the door, and shakes the iron walls 
of his dungeon, so as to overthrow the ornamental 
urn upon its summit. We tremble, lest he should 
break forth amongst us. Much of his time is spent 
in sighs, burthened with unutterable grief, and long- 
drawn through the funnel. He amuses himself, 
too, with repeating all the whispers, the moans, and 
the louder utterances or tempestuous howls of the 
wind; so that the stove becomes a microcosm of the 
aerial world. Occasionally, there are strange com- 
binations of sounds — voices, talking almost artic- 
ulately — within the hollow chest of iron, insomuch 
that fancy beguiles me with the idea that my firewood 
must have grown in that infernal forest of lamentable 
trees which breathed their complaints to Dante. 
When the listener is half asleep, he may readily 
take these voices for the conversation of spirits, and 
assign them an intelligible meaning. Anon, there is 



178 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

a pattering noise — drip, drip, drip — as if a summer's 
shower were falling within the narrow circumference 
of the stove. 

These barren and tedious eccentricities are all that 
the air-tight stove can bestow, in exchange for the 
invaluable moral influences which we have lost by 
our desertion of the open fireplace. Alas! is this 
world so very bright, that we can afford to choke up 
such a domestic fountain of gladsomeness, and sit 
down by its darkened source, without being conscious 
of a gloom ? ^ 

It is my belief that social intercourse cannot long 
continue what it has been, now that we have sub- 
tracted from it so important and vivifying an ele- 
ment as firelight. The effects will be more percep- 
tible on our children, and the generations that shall 
succeed them, than on ourselves, the mechanism of 
whose life may remain unchanged, though its spirit 
be far other than it was. The sacred trust of the 
household fire has been transmitted in unbroken 
succession from the earliest ages, and faithfully 
cherished, in spite of every discouragement, such as 
the Curfew law of the Norman conquerors; until, 
in these evil days, physical science has nearly suc- 
ceeded in extinguishing it. But we at least have our 
youthful recollections tinged with the glow of the 
hearth, and our lifelong habits and associations ar- 
ranged on the principle of a mutual bond in the 
domestic fire, Therefore, though the sociable friend 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 179 

be forever departed, yet in a degree he will be spirit- 
ually present with us; and still more will the empty 
forms, which were once full of his rejoicing presence, 
continue to rule our manners. We shall draw our 
chairs together, as we and our forefathers have been 
wont, for thousands of years back, and sit around 
some blank and empty corner of the room, babbling, 
with unreal cheerfulness, of topics suitable to the 
homely fireside. A warmth from the past — from 
the ashes of bygone years, and the raked-up embers 
of long ago — will sometimes thaw the ice about our 
hearts. But it must be otherwise with our succes- 
sors. On the most favorable supposition, they will 
be acquainted with the fireside in no better shape 
than that of the sullen stove; and more probably, 
they will have grow^n up amid furnace heat, in houses 
which might be fancied to have their foundation over 
the infernal pit, whence sulphurous steams and 
unbreathable exhalations ascend through the aper- 
tures of the floor. There will be nothing to attract 
these poor children to one center. They will never 
behold one another through that peculiar medium of 
vision — the ruddy gleam of blazing wood or bitumi- 
nous coal — which gives the human spirit so deep 
an insight into its fellows, and melts all humanity 
into one cordial heart of hearts. Domestic life — 
if it may still be termed domestic — will seek its 
separate corners, and never gather itself into groups. 
The easy gossip — the merry, yet unambitious jest 



l8o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

— the lifelike, practical discussion of real matters 
* in a casual way — the soul of truth, which is so often 

incarnated in a simple fireside word — will disappear 
from earth. Conversation will contract the air of 
a debate, and all mortal intercourse be chilled with 
a fatal frost. 

In classic times, the exhortation to fight "pro aris 
et focis" — for the altars and the hearths — was con- 
sidered the strongest appeal that could be made to 
patriotism. And it seemed an immortal utterance; 
for all subsequent ages and people have acknowl- 
edged its force, and responded to it with the full por- 
tion of manhood that Nature had assigned to each. 
Wisely were the Altar and the Hearth conjoined in 
one mighty sentence! For the hearth, too, had its 
kindred sanctity. ReUgion sat down beside it, not in 
the priestly robes which decorated, and perhaps dis- 
guised her at the altar, but arrayed in a simple 
matron's garb, and uttering her lessons with the 
tenderness of a mother's voice and heart. The holy 
Hearth! If any earthly and material thing — or 
rather, a divine idea, embodied in brick and mortar 

— might be supposed to possess the permanence of 
moral truth, it was this. All revered it. The man 
who did not put off his shoes upon this holy ground 
would have deemed it pastime to trample upon the 
altar. It has been our task to uproot the hearth. 
What further reform is left for our children to 
achieve, unless they overthrow the altar too ? And 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE i8l 

by what appeal, hereafter, when the breath of hostile 
armies may mingle with the pure, cold breezes of our 
country, shall we attempt to rouse up native valor ? 
Fight for your hearths ? There will be none through- 
out the land. Fight tor your Stoves! Not I, 
in faith! If, in such a cause, I strike a blow, it shall 
be on the invader's part; and Heaven grant that it 
may shatter the abomination all to pieces! 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 



It were much for one to be among the early discoverers of 
foreign Hterary treasures to his own countrymen; more, to be 
among the pioneers in creating a national poetical literature: 
yet both these honors were achieved by Longfellow. Born 
and educated in Maine, his life was chiefly identified with 
Cambridge and Harvard, where he labored long. 

Even in college (Bowdoin), Longfellow wrote many ballads 
and other poems. For three years after graduation (1826- 
1829) he sojourned in European countries, returning to be 
Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures in Bowdoin. 
Then two years more of European study, and he held the same 
chair in Harvard for eighteen years (183 6-1 854). 

It was in 1835 that Longfellow published his first prose 
work, *^Outre-Mer" (Beyond the Sea), travel-sketches from 
Europe and especially from Spain. Soon after, he began 
collecting his fugitive poems, and brought out volume after 
volume: ''Voices of the Night" (1839); ''Ballads" etc., 
including Translations (1841); "Poems on Slavery" (1842); 
"Spanish Student" (1843), ^tc. In 1847 ^^ published 
"Evangeline," a pathetic romance of early America, noted 
for its melodious (though not always faultless) use of the hex- 
ameter versification. The Indian legend of "Hiawatha," in 
1855, made a great impression. It is impossible here to 
enumerate Longfellow's volumes. Whether original poems 
or sympathetic translations from French, Spanish, Italian, 
German, Swedish, Danish, etc., the verbal and metrical 
music, the poetic fancies, delicate or vigorous, the distinct 
elements both of European history and legend, of American 
themes, and of the universal human — whatever the note, it was 
sweet, pure in spiritual intent, and artistically sounded. A 
devoted student, a finished scholar, Longfellow was, and will 
long remain, the poet of the hearth and home. 

His prose work was much less in amount and importance, 
but he wrote excellent things in romance and in scholarly 
literary criticism; among them the "Defense of Poetry." 

184 



DEFENSE OF POETRY 

" Gentle Sir Philip Sidney, thou knewest what 
belonged to a scholar; thou knewest what pains, 
what toil, what travail, conduct to perfection; well 
couldest thou give every virtue his encouragement, 
every art his due, every writer his desert, 'cause none 
more virtuous, witty, or learned than thyself." ^ 
This eulogium was bestowed upon one of the most 
learned and illustrious men that adorned the last half 
of the sixteenth century. Literary history is full of 
his praises. He is spoken of as the ripe scholar, the 
able statesman — "the soldier's, scholar's, courtier's 
eye, tongue, sword" — the man "whose whole Ufe 
was poetry put into action." He and the Chevalier 
Bayard were the connecting links between the ages 
of chivalry and our own. . . . 

The most celebrated productions of Sidney's pen 
are the "Arcadia" and the "Defence of Poesie." 
The former was written during the author's retire- 
ment at Wilton, the residence of his sister, the Coun- 
tess of Pembroke. Though so much celebrated in 

^ Nash's *^ Pierce Penniless." 
i8s 



1 86 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

its day/ it is now little known, and still less read. 
Its very subject prevents it from being popular at 
present; for now the pastoral reed seems entirely 
thrown aside. The muses no longer haunt the groves 
of Arcadia. The shepherd's song — the sound of 
oaten pipe, — and the scenes of pastoral loves and 
jealousies, are no becoming themes for the spirit of 
the age. Few at present take for their motto, 
^'flumina amo silvasque inglorius,^^ and, consequently, 
few read the ^^ Arcadia.'' 

The ^^ Defence of Poesie" is a work of rare merit. 
It is a golden little volume, which the scholar may lay 
beneath liis pillow, as Chrysostom did the works of 
Aristophanes. We do not, however, mean to analyze 
it in this place; but recommend to our readers to 
purchase this ^^ sweet food of sweetly uttered knowl- 
edge." It will be read with delight by all who have a 
taste for the true beauties of poetry; and may go far 
to remove the prejudices of those who have not. 
To this latter class we address the concluding remarks 
of the author: — 

^ Many of our readers will recollect the high-wrought 
eulogium of Harvey Pierce, when he consigned the work to 
immortality: ''Live ever, sweete, sweete booke: the simple 
image of his gentle witt; and the golden pillar of his noble 
courage; and ever notify unto the world that thy writer was 
the secretary of eloquence, the breath of the muses, the honey- 
bee of the daintyest flowers of witt and arte ; the pith of morale 
and intellectual virtues, the arme of Bellona in the field, the 
tongue of Suada in the chamber, the sprite of Practice in esse, 
and the paragon of excellency in print." 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 187 

"So that since the ever-praiseworthy poesy is full 
of virtue, breeding delightfulness, and void of no 
gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning; 
since the blames laid against it are either false or 
feeble; since the cause why it is not esteemed in 
England is the fault of poet-apes, not poets; since, 
lastly, our tongue is most fit to honor poesy, and to 
be honored by poesy; I conjure you all that have 
had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine, 
even in the name of the nine muses, no more to scorn 
the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at 
the name of poets, as though they were next inheritors 
to fools; no more to jest at the reverend title of 'a 
rhymer'; but to believe, with Aristotle, that they 
were the ancient treasurers of the Grecians' divinity; 
to believe, with Bembus, that they were the first 
bringers in of all civility; to believe, with Scaliger, 
that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you 
an honest man, than the reading of Vergil; to be- 
lieve, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, 
that it pleased the heavenly deity by Hesiod and 
Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowl- 
edge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy, natural and moral, 
and 'quid non?^ to believe, with me, that there are 
many mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose 
were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be 
abused; to believe, with Landin, that they are so 
beloved of the gods, that whatsoever they write 
proceeds of a divine fury; lastly, to believe them- 



1 88 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

selves, when they tell you they will make you im- 
mortal by their verses. ..." 

As no "Apologie for Poetrie'' has appeared among 
us, we hope that Sir Philip Sidney's "Defence" 
will be widely read and long remembered. O that 
in our country it might be the harbinger of as bright 
an intellectual day as it was in his own! With us, 
the spirit of the age is clamorous for utility — - for 
visible, tangible utility — for bare, brawny, mus- 
cular utility. . . . We are swallowed up in schemes 
for gain, and engrossed with contrivances for bodily 
enjoyments, as if this particle of dust were immortal 
— as if the soul needed no aliment, and the mind no 
raiment. We glory in the extent of our territory, 
in our rapidly increasing population, in our agricul- 
tural privileges, and our commercial advantages. We 
boast of the magnificence and beauty of our natural 
scenery — of the various climates of our sky — the 
summers of our northern regions — the salubrious 
winters of the south, and of the various products of 
our soil, from the pines of our northern highlands 
to the palm-tree and aloes of our southern frontier. 
We boast of the increase and extent of our physical 
strength, the sound of populous cities, breaking the 
silence and solitude of our western Territories — 
plantations conquered from the forest, and gardens 
springing up in the wilderness. Yet the true glory 
of a nation consists not in the extent of -its territory, 
the pomp of its forests, the majesty of its rivers, the 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 189 

height of its mountains, and the beauty of its sky, 
but in the extent of its mental power — the majesty 
of its intellect — the height, and depth, and purity 
of its moral nature. It consists not in what nature 
has given to the body, but in what nature and educa- 
tion have given to the mind — not in the world 
around us, but in the world w^ithin us — not in the 
circumstances of fortune, but in the attributes of the 
soul — not in the corruptible, transitory, and perish- 
able forms of matter, but in the incorruptible, the 
permanent, the imperishable mind. True greatness 
is the greatness of the mind — the true glory of a 
nation is moral and intellectual preeminence. 

But still the main current of education runs in the 
wide and not well-defined channel of immediate and 
practical utility. . . . Now, under correction be it 
said, we are much led astray by this word utility. 
There is hardly a word in our language whose meaning 
is so vague, and so often misunderstood and misap- 
plied. We too often limit its application to those 
acquisitions and pursuits which are of immediate 
and visible profit to ourselves and the community; 
regarding as comparatively or utterly useless many 
others which, though more remote in their effects 
and more imperceptible in their operation, are, not- 
withstanding, higher in their aim, wider in their 
influence, more certain in. their results, and more 
intimately connected with the common weal. We 
are too apt to think that nothing can be useful but 



igo BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

what is done with a noise, at noonday, and at the 
corners of the streets; as if action and utihty were 
synonymous, and it were not as useless to act with- 
out thinking as it is to think without acting. But 
the truth is, the word utiHty has a wider signification 
than this. It embraces in its proper definition what- 
ever contributes to our happiness; and thus includes 
many of those arts and sciences, many of those secret 
studies and solitary avocations which are generally 
regarded either as useless or as absolutely injurious 
to society. Not he alone does ser\dce to the state 
whose wisdom guides her councils at home, nor he 
whose voice asserts her dignity abroad. A thousand 
little rills, springing up in the retired walks of life, 
go to swell the rushing tide of national glory and 
prosperity; and whoever in the solitude of his 
chamber, and by even a single effort of his mind, has 
added to the intellectual preeminence of his country, 
has not lived in vain, nor to himself alone. Does 
not the pen of the historian perpetuate the fame of 
the hero and the statesman? Do not their names 
live in the song of the bard ? Do not the pencil and 
the chisel touch the soul while they delight the eye ? 
Does not the spirit of the patriot and the sage, 
looking from the painted canvas, or eloquent from 
the marble lip, fill our hearts with veneration for all 
that is great in intellect and godlike in virtue ? . . . 
But against no branch of scholarship is the cry so 
loud as against poetry, ''the quintessence, or rather 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW ' 191 

the luxury, of all learning/' Its enemies pretend that 
it is injurious both to the mind and the heart; that 
it incapacitates us for the severer discipline of pro- 
fessional study; and that, by exciting the feel- 
ings and misdirecting the imagination, it unfits us 
for the common duties of life and the intercourse of 
this matter-of-fact world. And yet such men have 
lived, as Homer, and Dante, and Milton — poets and 
scholars whose minds were bathed in song, and yet 
not weakened; men who severally carried forward 
the spirit of their age, who soared upward on the wings 
of poetry, and yet were not unfitted to penetrate 
the deepest recesses of the human soul and search 
out the hidden treasures of wisdom and the secret 
springs of thought, feeling, and action. None fought 
more bravely at Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea 
than did the poet ^schylus. Richard Coeur-de-Lion 
was a poet; but his boast was in his very song: — 

^'Bon guerrier a I'estendart 
Trouvaretz le Roi Richard." 

Ercilla and Garcilaso were poets; but the great epic 
of Spain was written in the soldier's tent and on the 
field of battle, and the descendant of the Incas was 
slain in the assault of a castle in the south of France. 
Cervantes lost an arm at the battle of Lepanto, and 
Sir Philip Sidney was the breathing reality of the 
poet's dream, a living and glorious proof that poetry 
neither enervates the mind nor unfits us for the 
practical duties of life. 



192 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

Nor is it less true that the legitimate tendency 
of poetry is to exalt rather than to debase — to purify 
rather than to corrupt. Read the inspired pages of 
the Hebrew prophets; the eloquent aspirations of the 
Psalmist! Where did ever the spirit of devotion 
bear up the soul more steadily and loftily than in the 
language of their poetry? And where has poetry 
been more exalted, more spirit-stirring, more admi- 
rable, or more beautiful, than when thus soaring 
upward on the wings of sublime devotion, the dark- 
ness and shadows of earth beneath it, and from above 
the brightness of an opened heaven pouring around 
it ? It is true the poetic talent may be, for it has been, 
most lamentably perverted. But when poetry is 
thus perverted — when it thus forgets its native sky 
to grovel in what is base, sensual, and depraved — 
though it may not have lost all its original brightness, 
nor appear less than ^^the excess of glory obscured," 
yet its birthright has been sold, its strength has been 
blasted, and its spirit wears ^'deep scars of thunder." 

It does not, then, appear to be the necessary nor the 
natural tendency of poetry to enervate the mind, 
corrupt the heart, or incapacitate us for performing 
the private and public duties of life. On the con- 
trary, it may be made, and should be made, an instru- 
ment for improving the condition of society, and 
advancing the great purpose of human happiness. 
Man must have his hours of meditation as well as of 
action. The unities of time are not so well preserved 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 193 

in the great drama but that moments will occur when 
the stage must be left vacant, and even the busiest 
actors pass behind the scenes. There will be eddies 
in the stream of life, though the main current sweeps 
steadily onward, till ^4t pours in full cataract over 
the grave/' There are times when both mind and 
body are worn down by the severity of daily toil; 
when the grasshopper is a burden, and, thirsty with 
the heat of labor, the spirit longs for the waters of 
Shiloah that go softly. At such seasons both mind 
and body should unbend themselves; they should 
be set free from the yoke of their customary service, 
and thought take some other direction than that 
of the beaten, dusty thoroughfare of business. And 
there are times, too, when the divinity stirs within 
us; when the soul abstracts herself from the world, 
and the slow and regular motions of earthly business 
do not keep pace with the heaven-directed mind. 
Then earth lets go her hold; the soul feels herself 
more akin to heaven; and soaring upward, the deni- 
zen of her native sky, she "begins to reason like her- 
self, and to discourse in a strain above mortality." 
Call, if you will, such thoughts and feehngs the 
dreams of the imagination; yet they are no unprofit- 
able dreams. Such moments of silence and medi- 
tation are often those of the greatest utility to our- 
selves and others. Yes, we would dream awhile, 
that the spirit is not always the bondman of the flesh; 
that there is something immortal in us, something 



194 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

which, amid the din of Ufe, urges us to aspire after 
the attributes of a more spiritual nature. Let the 
cares and business of the world sometimes sleep, for 
this sleep is the awakening of the soul. . . . 

Popular judgment has seldom fallen into a greater 
error than that of supposing that poetry must neces- 
sarily, and from its very nature, convey false and 
therefore injurious impressions. The error lies in not 
discriminating between what is true to nature and 
what is true to fact. From the very nature of things, 
neither poetry nor any one of the imitative arts can 
in itself be false. They can be false no further than, 
by the imperfection of human skill, they convey 
to our mind imperfect and garbled views of what they 
represent. Hence a painting or poetical description 
may be true to nature, and yet false in point of fact. 
The canvas before you may represent a scene in 
which every individual feature of the landscape 
shall be true to nature — the tree, the waterfall, 
the distant mountain — every object there shall be 
an exact copy of an original that has a real existence, 
and yet the scene itself may be absolutely false in 
point of fact. Such a scene, with the features of 
the landscape combined precisely in the way rep- 
resented, may exist nowhere but in the imagination of 
the artist. The statue of the Venus de' Medici is the 
perfection of female beauty; and every individual 
feature had its living original. Still, the statue itself 
had no living archetype. It is true to nature, but 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I95 

it is not true to fact. So with the stage. The scene 
represented, the characters introduced, the plot 
of the piece, and the action of the performers may all 
be conformable to nature, and yet not be conform- 
able to an}'- preexisting reality. The characters there 
personified may never have existed; the events rep- 
resented may never have transpired. And so, too, 
with poetry. The scenes and events it describes, 
the characters and passions it portrays, may all be 
natural though not real. Thus, in a certain sense, 
fiction itself may be true — true to the nature of 
things, and consequently true in the impressions it 
conveys. And hence the reason why fiction has 
always been made so subservient to the cause of truth. 

Allowing, then, that poetry is nothing but fiction, 
that all it describes is false in point of fact, still its 
elements have a real existence, and the impressions 
we receive can be erroneous so far only as the views 
presented to the mind are garbled and false to nature. 
And this is a fault incident to the artist, and not 
inherent in the art itself. So that we may fairly 
conclude, from these considerations, that the natural 
tendency of poetry is to give us correct moral impres- 
sions, and thereby advance the cause of truth and the 
improvement of society. 

There is another very important view of the sub- 
ject arising out of the origin and nature of poetry, 
and its intimate connection with individual character 
and the character of society. 



196 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



^ 



The origin of poetry loses itself in the shades of 
a remote and fabulous age, of which we have only 
vague and uncertain traditions. Its fountain, like 
that of the river of the desert, springs up in a distant 
and unknown region, the theme of visionary story 
and the subject of curious speculation. Doubtless, 
however, it originated amid the scenes of pastoral 
life and in the quiet and repose of a golden age. 
There is something in the soft melancholy of the 
groves which pervades the heart and kindles the 
imagination. Their retirement is favorable to the 
musings of the poetic mind. The trees that waved 
their leafy branches to the summer wind or heaved 
and groaned beneath the passing storm, the shadow 
moving on the grass, the bubbling brook, the insect 
skimming on its surface, the receding valley and the 
distant mountain — these would be some of the 
elements of pastoral song. Its subject would nat- 
urally be the complaint of a shepherd and the charms 
of some gentle shepherdess — 

"A happy soul, that all the way 
To heaven hath a summer's day." 

It is natural, too, that the imagination, familiar with 
the outward world, and connecting the idea of the 
changing seasons and the spontaneous fruits of the 
earth with the agency of some unknown power that 
regulated and produced them, should suggest the 
thought of presiding deities, propitious in the smiling 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 197 

sky and adverse in the storm. The fountain that 
gushed up as if to meet the thirsty lip was made the 
dwelling of a nymph; the grove that lent its shelter 
and repose from the heat of noon became the abode 
of dryads; a god presided over shepherds and their 
flocks, and a goddess shook the yellow harvest from 
her lap. These deities were propitiated by songs 
and festive rites. And thus poetry added new charms 
to the simplicity and repose of bucolic life, and the 
poet mingled in his verse the delights of rural ease 
and the praise of the rural deities which bestowed 
them. 

Such was poetry in those happy ages, when, camps 
and courts unknown, life was itself an eclogue. But 
in later days it sang the achievements of Grecian 
and Roman heroes, and pealed in the war-song of the 
Gothic Skald. These early essays were rude and 
unpolished. As nations advanced in civilization and 
refinement poetry advanced with them. In each 
successive age it became the image of their thoughts 
and feelings, of their manners, customs, and char- 
acters; for poetry is but the warm expression of the 
thoughts and feelings of a people, and we speak of it 
as being national when the character of a nation 
shines visibly and distinctly through it. 

Thus, for example, Castilian poetry is characterized 
by sounding expressions, and that pomp and majesty 
so peculiar to Spanish manners and character. On 
the other hand, English poetry possesses in a high 



198 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

degree the charms of rural and moral feeling; it flows 
onward like a woodland stream, in which we see the 
reflection of the sylvan landscape and of the heaven 
above us. 

It is from this intimate connection of poetry with 
the manners, customs, and characters of nations, 
that one of its highest uses is drawn. The impres- 
sions produced by poetry upon national character, 
at any period, are again reproduced, and give a more 
pronounced and individual character to the poetry 
of a subsequent period. And hence it is that the 
poetry of a nation sometimes throws so strong a light 
upon the page of its history, and renders luminous 
those obscure passages which often baffle the long- 
searching eye of studious erudition. In this view, 
poetry assumes new importance with all who search 
for historic truth. Besides, the view^ of the various 
fluctuations of the human mind, as exhibited, not 
in history, but in the poetry of successive epochs, 
is more interesting, and less liable to convey erroneous 
impressions, than any record of mere events. The 
great advantage drawn from the study of history is 
not to treasure up in the mind a multitude of discon- 
nected facts, but from these facts to derive some 
conclusions, tending to illustrate the movements 
of the general mind, the progress of society, the man- 
ners, customs, and institutions, the moral and intel- 
lectual character of mankind in different nations, 
at different times, and under the operation of dif- 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 199 

ferent circumstances. Historic facts are chiefly 
valuable as exhibiting intellectual phenomena. And, 
so far as poetry exhibits these phenomena more per- 
fectly and distinctly than history does, so far is it 
superior to history. The history of a nation is the 
external symbol of its character; from it we reason 
back to the spirit of the age that fashioned its shad- 
owy outline. But poetry is the spirit of the age itself 
— embodied in the forms of language, and speaking 
in a voice that is audible to the external as well as 
the internal sense. . . . 

Besides, there are epochs which have no contem- 
poraneous history; but have left in their popular 
poetry pretty ample materials for estimating the 
character of the times. The events, indeed, therein 
recorded may be exaggerated facts, or vague tradi- 
tions, or inventions entirely apocryphal; yet they 
faithfully represent the spirit of the ages which pro- 
duced them; they contain direct allusions and inci- 
dental circumstances, too insignificant in themselves 
to have been fictitious, and yet on that very account 
the most important parts of the poem in an historical 
point of view. Such, for example, are the '^Nibel- 
ungen Lied'' in Germany; the ^'Poema del Cid" 
in Spain; and the '^ Songs of the Troubadours" in 
France. Hence poetry comes in for a large share 
in that high eulogy which, in the true spirit of the 
scholar, a celebrated German critic has bestowed 
upon letters: ^^If we consider literature in its widest 



200 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

sense, as the voice which gives expression to human 
intellect — as the aggregate mass of symbols, in 
which the spirit of an age or the character of a nation 
is shadowed forth, then indeed a great and various 
literature is, without doubt, the most valuable pos- 
session of which any nation can boast.'' ^ 

From all these considerations, we are forced to the 
conclusion that poetry is a subject of far greater im- 
portance in itself, and in its bearing upon the condi- 
tion of society, than the majority of mankind would 
be wilUng to allow. ... It seems every way im- 
portant that now, while we are forming our hterature, 
we should make it as original, characteristic, and 
national as possible. To effect this, it is not neces- 
sary that the warwhoop should ring in every Une, 
and every page be rife with scalps, tomahawks, 
and wampima. Shade of Tecumseh forbid ! The 
whole secret lies in Sidney's maxim — "Look in 
thy heart and write." For — 

*Xantars non pot gaire valer. 
Si d'inz del cor no mov lo chang." ^ 

Of this anon. We will first make a few remarks upon 
the word national, as appUed to the hterature of a 
country; for when we speak of a national poetry 

^ Schlegel, '^Lectures on the History of Literature," vol. i. 
lee. vii. 

^ *'The poet's song is little worth, 

If it moveth not from within the heart," 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 20I 

we do not employ the term in that vague and indefi- 
nite way in which many writers use it. 

A national literature, then, in the widest significa- 
tion of the words, embraces every mental effort made 
by the inhabitants of a country, through the medium 
of the press. Every book written by a citizen of a 
country belongs to its national literature. But the 
term has also a more peculiar and appropriate defi- 
nition; for, when we say that the literature of a 
country is national, we mean that it bears upon it the 
stamp of national character. We refer to those dis- 
tinguishing features which literature receives from 
the spirit of a nation — from its scenery and climate, 
its historic recollections, its government, its various 
institutions — from all those national peculiarities 
which are the result of no positive institutions; and, 
in a word, from the thousand external circumstances, 
which either directly or indirectly exert an influence 
upon the literature of a nation, and give it a marked 
and individual character, distinct from that of the 
literature of other nations. . . . 

Every one acquainted with the works of the 
English poets must have noted that a moral feeHng 
and a certain rural quiet and repose are among their 
most prominent characteristics. The features of 
their native landscape are transferred to the printed 
page, and as we read we hear the warble of the 
skylark — the '^hollow murmuring wind, or silver 
rain.'' The shadow of the woodland scene lends a 
pensive shadow to the ideal world of poetry. 



202 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

[Here the writer introduces a number of characteristic 
rural descriptions from English poems, beautiful in them- 
selves and illustrative of his argument, but not necessary 
to it.] 

Still, with all this taste for the charms of rural 
description and sylvan song, pastoral poetry has 
never been much cultivated nor much admired in 
England. . . . Nor is this remarkable. For though 
the love of rural ease is characteristic of the English, 
yet the rigors of their climate render their habits 
of pastoral life anything but deUghtful. ... On 
the contrary, the poetry of the Itahans, the Spaniards, 
and the Portuguese is redolent of the charms of pas- 
toral indolence and enjoyment; for they inhabit 
countries in which pastoral life is a reaUty and not a 
fiction, where the winter's sun will almost make you 
seek the shade, and the summer nights are mild and 
beautiful in the open air. The babbling brook and 
cooling breeze are luxuries in a southern clime, 
where you 

^^See the .sun set, sure he'll rise to-morrow. 
Not through a misty morning twinkling, weak as 

A drunken man's dead eye, in maudlin sorrow, 
But with all heaven t' himself." 

A love of indolence and a warm imagination are 
characteristic of the inhabitants of the South. These 
are natural effects of a soft, voluptuous climate. 
It is there a luxury to let the body lie at ease, stretched 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 203 

by a fountain in the lazy stillness of a summer noon, 
and suffer the dreamy fancy to lose itself in idle 
reverie and give a form to the wind and a spirit to the 
shadow and the leaf. Hence the prevalence of per- 
sonification and the exaggerations of figurative 
language, so characteristic of the poetry of southern 
nations. . . . 

We repeat, then, that we wish our native poets 
would give a more national character to their writ- 
ings. In order to effect this they have only to write 
more naturally, to writQ from their own feelings and 
impressions, from the influence of what they see 
around them, and not from any preconceived notions 
of what poetry ought to be, caught by reading many 
books and imitating many models. This is pecul- 
iarly true in descriptions of natural scenery. In 
these let us have no more skylarks and nightingales. 
For us they only warble in books. A painter might 
as well introduce an elephant or a rhinoceros into 
a New England landscape. We would not restrict 
our poets in the choice of their subjects or the scenes 
of their story; but, when they sing under an Ameri- 
can sky and describe a native landscape, let the de- 
scription be graphic, as if it had been seen and not 
imagined. We wish, too, to see the figures and ima- 
gery of poetry a little more characteristic, as if drawn 
from nature and not from books. . . . 

As the human mind is so constituted that all 
men receive to a greater or less degree a complexion 



204 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

from those with whom they are conversant, the 
writer who means to school himself to poetic com- 
position — we mean so far as regards style and 
diction — should be very careful what authors he 
studies. He should leave the present age and go 
back to the olden time. He should make, not the 
writings of an individual, but the whole body of 
English classical literature his study. There is a 
strength of expression, a clearness, and force and 
raciness of thought in the elder English poets which 
we may look for in vain among those who flourish in 
these days of verbiage. Truly, the degeneracy of 
modern poetry is no schoolboy declamation! The 
stream, whose fabled fountain gushes from the 
Grecian mount, flowed brightly through those ages, 
when the souls of men stood forth in the rugged free- 
dom of nature and gave a wild and romantic charac- 
ter to the ideal landscape. But in these practical 
days, whose spirit has so unsparingly leveled to the 
even surface of utility the bold irregularities of hu- 
man genius, and lopped off the luxuriance of poetic 
feeling which once lent its grateful shade to the 
haunts of song, that stream has spread itself into 
stagnant pools which exhale an unhealthy atmos- 
phere, while the party-colored bubbles that gUtter on 
its surface show the corruption from which they 
spring. 

Another circumstance which tends to give an effem- 
inate and unmanly character to our literature is 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 205 

the precocity of our writers. Premature exhibitions 
of talent are an unstable foundation to build a na- 
tional literature upon. Roger Ascham, the school- 
master of princes, and for the sake of antithesis, we 
suppose, called the Prince of Schoolmasters, has 
well said of precocious minds: ^'They be like trees 
that showe forth faire blossoms and broad leaves 
in spring-time, but bring out small and not long- 
lasting fruit in harvest- time; and that, only such as 
fall and rott before they be ripe, and so never or 
seldome come to any good at all." It is natural that 
the young should be enticed by the wreaths of literary 
fame, whose hues are so passing beautiful even to the 
more sober-sighted, and whose flowers breathe around 
them such exquisite perfumes. Many are deceived 
into a misconception of their talents by the indiscreet 
and indiscriminate praise of friends. They think 
themselves destined to redeem the glory of their age 
and country; to shine as ^^ bright particular stars''; 
but in reality their genius 

*'Is like the glow-worm's light the apes so wondered at, 
Which, when they gathered sticks and laid upon 't, 
And blew — and blew — turned tail and went out 
presently.'' 

We have set forth the portrait of modern poetry 
in rather gloomy colors; for we really think that the 
greater part of what is published in this book- writing 
age ought in justice to suffer the fate of the children 



2o6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

of Thetis, whose immortality was tried by fire. 
We hope, however, that ere long some one of our most 
gifted bards will throw his fetters off, and, relying in 
himself alone, fathom the recesses of his own mind, 
and bring up rich pearls from the secret depths of 
thought. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

I 809-1 894 



One of the most alert intelligences produced in America, 
Dr. Holmes — distinctively a Bostonian — filled a wide place. 
He was a physician, and, besides his practice, was Professor of 
Anatomy and Physiology in Dartmouth from 1838, and at Har- 
vard from 1847 ^^ 1882, taking high rank as an authority. 
While still in college he was known as a humorous poet, and 
later life brought knowledge and wisdom, infusing his verse 
with beauty, philosophy, and an unaffected pathos. 

By 1857 Holmes had won an enviable place, both in his pro- 
fession, as poet, and as popular lecturer. But in that year 
began the Atlantic Monthly, Lowell its first editor, who in- 
sisted on prose contributions from Holmes. Thus came the 
original, varied, wise, and witty papers called *' Autocrat 
of the Breakfast-Table." In them — as well as in succeed- 
ing series, "Professor at the Breakfast-Table" (1859), **Poet 
at the Breakfast-Table" (1872), and the last and most 
autobiographical notes, ''Over the Tea-cups" (1891) — ap- 
peared some of the author's finest poems. " The Chambered 
Nautilus" was in Number IV of ''The Autocrat," most of 
which is* given in this volume, and many others of the most 
widely known were among them. These papers are considered 
Holmes's best work. 

The author wrote several novels, — "Elsie Venner," "The 
Guardian Angel," and "A Mortal Antipathy" — all turning 
on the mysteries of heredity: profoundly interesting, but 
rather as studies in the abnormal than as artistic fiction. 

The combination of genial fun with pathos, witty scintilla- 
tion with thoughtful profoundity, warm human sympathy 
with free religious aspiration (his creed, as he said, being " in 
two words — the two first of the Paternoster"), diffuse an 
inspiring cheer and delight, while the author's literary felicity, 
whether in prose or poetry, is altogether admirable. 



208 






TABLE TALK 

[I AM SO well pleased with my boarding-house that 
I intend to remain there, perhaps for years. Of 
course I shall have a great many conversations to 
report, and they will necessarily be of different tone 
and on different subjects. The talks are Uke the 
breakfasts, — sometimes dipped toast, and some- 
times dry. You must take them as they come. 
How can I do what all these letters ask me to? 
No. I wants serious and earnest thought. No. 2 
(letter smells of bad cigars) must have more jokes; 
wants me to tell a "good storey" which he has copied 
out for me. (I suppose two letters before the word 
''good'' refer to some Doctor of Divinity who told 
the story.) No. 3 (in female hand) — more poetry. 
No. 4 wants something that would be of use to a 
practical man. {Prahctical mahn he probably pro- 
nounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged, sweet-scented) — 
''more sentiment," — "heart's outpourings." 

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but 
report such remarks as I happen to have made at 
our breakfast-table. Their character will depend 
on many accidents, — a good deal on the particular 
persons in the company to whom they were ad- 
dressed. It so happens that those which follow 

209 



2IO BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

were mainly intended for the divinity-student and 
the schoolmistress; though others, whom I need not 
mention, saw fit to interfere, with more or less pro- 
priety, in the conversation. This is one of my privi- 
leges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking 
for our whole company, I don't expect all the readers 
of this periodical to be interested in my notes of what 
was said. Still, I think there may be a few that will 
rather Uke this vein, — possibly prefer it to a Hveher 
one, — serious young men, and young women gen- 
erally, in life's roseate parenthesis from years of 

age to inclusive. . . .] 

— The more we study the body and the mind, the 
more we find both to be governed, not by^ but accord- 
ing to laws, such as we observe in the larger uni- 
verse. — You think you know all about walking, — 
don't you, now? Well, how do you suppose your 
lower limbs are held to your body? They are sucked 
up by two cupping vessels (^^ cotyloid" — cup-like — 
cavities), and held there as long as you live, and 
longer. At any rate, you think you move them back- 
ward and forward at such a rate as your will deter- 
mines, don't you ? On the contrary, they swing just 
as any other pendulums swing, at a fixed rate, de- 
termined by their length. You can alter this by 
muscular power, as you can take hold of the pendulum 
of a clock and make it move faster or slower; but 
your ordinary gait is timed by the same mechanism 
as the movements of the solar system. . . , 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 211 

Just as we find a mathematical rule at the bottom 
of many of the bodily movements, just so thought 
may be supposed to have its regular cycles. Such or 
such a thought comes round periodically, in its turn. 
Accidental suggestions, however, so far interfere with 
the regular cycles, that we may find them practically 
beyond our power of recognition. Take all this for 
what it is worth, but at any rate you will agree that 
there are certain particular thoughts that do not come 
up once a day, nor once a week, but that a year 
would hardly go round without your having them 
pass through your mind. Here is one which comes 
up at intervals in this way. Some one speaks of it, 
and there is an instant and eager smile of assent in the 
listener or listeners. Yes, indeed; they have often 
been struck by it. 

All at once a conviction flashes through us that we 
have been in the same precise circumstances as at the 
present instant, once or many times before. 

O, dear, yes! — said one of the company, — every- 
body has had that feeling. 

The landlady didn't know anything about such no- 
tions; it was an idee in folks' heads, she expected. 

The schoolmistress said, in a hesitating sort of way, 
that she knew the feeling well, and didn't like to 
experience it; it made her think she was a ghost, 
sometimes. 

The young fellow whom they call John said he 
knew all about it; he had just lighted a cheroot the 



212 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



other day, when a tremendous conviction all at once 
came over him that he had done just that same thing 
ever so many times before. I looked severely at him, 
and his countenance immediately fell — on the side 
toward me; I cannot answer for the other, for he can 
wdnk and laugh with either half of his face without 
the other half's knowing it. 

— I have noticed — I went on to say — the follow^ 
ing circumstances connected with these sudden im- 
pressions. First, that the condition which seems 
to be the dupUcate of a former one is often very 
trivial, — one that might have presented itself a 
hundred times. Secondly, that the impression is 
very evanescent, and that it is rarely, if ever, recalled 
by any voluntary effort, at least after any time has 
elapsed. Thirdly, that there is a disinclination to 
record the circumstances, and a sense of incapacity 
to reproduce the state of mind in words. Fourthly, 
I have often felt that the duplicate condition had not 
only occurred once before, but that it was familiar 
and, as it seemed, habitual. Lastly, I have had the 
same convictions in my dreams. 

How do I account for it? — Why, there are several 
ways that I can mention, and you may take your 
choice. The first is that which the young lady 
hinted at; — that these flashes are sudden recollec- 
tions of a previous existence. I don't believe that; 
for I remember a poor student I used to know told 
me he had such a conviction one day when he was 




OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 213 

blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever Uved 
in another world where they use Day and Martin. 

Some think that Dr. Wigan's doctrine of the brain's 
being a double organ, its hemispheres working to- 
gether hke the two eyes, accounts for it. One of the 
hemispheres hangs fire, they suppose, and the small 
interval between the perceptions of the nimble and 
the sluggish half seems an indefinitely long period, 
and therefore the second perception appears to be the 
copy of another, ever so old. But even allowing the 
center of perception to be double, I can see no good 
reason for supposing this indefinite lengthening of 
the time, nor any analogy that bears it out. It 
seems to me most likely that the coincidence of cir- 
cumstances is very partial, but that we take this 
partial resemblance for identity, as we occasionally 
do resemblances of persons. A momentary posture 
of circumstances is so far like some preceding one that 
we accept it as exactly the same, just as we accost a 
stranger occasionally, mistaking him for a friend. 
The apparent similarity may be owing, perhaps, quite 
as much to the mental state at the time, as to the 
outward circumstances. 

— Here is another of these curiously recurring 
remarks. I have said it, and heard it many times, 
and occasionally met with something like it in books, 
— somewhere in Bulwer's novels, I think, and in one 
of the works of Mr. Olmsted, I know. 

Memory, imagination, old sentiments and associa- 



214 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

tions, are more readily reached through the sense oj 
SMELL than by almost any other channel. 

Of course the particular odors which act upon each 
person's susceptibiKties differ. — O, yes! I will tell 
you some of mine. The smell of phosphorus is one 
of them. During a year or two of adolescence I used 
to be dabbling in chemistry a good deal, and as about 
that time I had my little aspirations and passions like 
another, some of these things got mixed up with each 
other: orange-colored fumes of nitrous acid, and 
visions as bright and transient; reddening litmus- 
paper, and blushing cheeks; — eheu! 

*^ Soles occidere et redire possunt," 

but there is no reagent that will redden the faded 
roses of eighteen hundred and — spare them! But, 
as I was saying, phosphorus fires this train of associa- 
tions in an instant; its luminous vapors with their 
penetrating odor throw me into a trance; it comes 
to me in a double sense ^^ trailing clouds of glory.'' 
Only the confounded Vienna matches, ohne phosphor- 
geruchj have worn my sensibilities a little. 

Then there is the marigold. When I was of small- 
est dimensions, and wont to ride impacted between 
the knees of fond parental pair, we would sometimes 
cross the bridge to the next village-town and stop 
opposite a low, brown, ^^gambrel-roofed" cottage. 
Out of it would come one Sally, sister of its swarthy 
tenant, swarthy herself, shady-lipped, sad-voiced, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 21 5 

and, bending over her flower-bed, would gather a 
*^posy," as she called it, for the little boy. Sally lies 
in the churchyard with a slab of blue slate at her head, 
lichen-crusted, and leaning a little within the last 
few years. Cottage, garden-beds, posies, grenadier- 
like rows of seedling onions, — stateliest of vege- 
tables, — all are gone, but the breath of a marigold 
brings them all back to me. 

Perhaps the herb everlasting, the fragrant immor- 
telle of our autumn fields, has the most suggestive 
odor to me of all those that set me dreaming. I can 
hardly describe the strange thoughts and emotions 
that come to me as I inhale the aroma of its pale, 
dry, rustling flowers. A something it has of sepul- 
chral spicery, as if it had been brought from the core 
of some great pyramid, where it had lain on the 
breast of a mummied Pharaoh. Something, too, of 
immortality in the sad, faint sweetness lingering so 
long in its lifeless petals. Yet this does not tell why 
it fills my eyes with tears and carries me in blissful 
thought to the banks of asphodel that border the 
River of Life. 

— I should not have talked so much about these 
personal susceptibilities, if I had not a remark to 
make about them which I believe is a new one. It is 
this. There may be a physical reason for the strange 
connection between the sense of smell and the mind. 
The olfactory nerve — so my friend, the Professor, 
tells me — is the only one directly connected with the 



2l6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

hemispheres of the brain, the parts in which, as we 
have every reason to beUeve, the intellectual processes 
are performed. To speak more truly, the olfactory 
*^ nerve" is not a nerve at all, he says, but a part of 
the brain, an intimate connection with its anterior 
lobes. Whether this anatomical arrangement is at 
the bottom of the facts I have mentioned, I will not 
decide, but it is curious enough to be worth remem- 
bering. Contrast the sense of taste, as a source of 
suggestive impressions, with that of smell. Now the 
Professor assures me that you will find the nerve of 
taste has no immediate connection with the brain 
proper, but only with the prolongation of the spinal 
cord. . . . 

Ah me! what strains and strophes of unwritten 
verse pulsate through my soul when I open a certain 
closet in the ancient house where I was born! On 
its shelves used to lie bundles of sweet-marjoram and 
pennyroyal and lavender and mint and catnip; there 
apples were stored until their seeds should grow 
black, which happy period there were sharp little 
milk-teeth always ready to anticipate; there peaches 
lay in the dark, thinking of the sunshine they had 
lost, until, like the hearts of saints that dream of 
heaven in their sorrow, they grew fragrant as the 
breath of angels. The odorous echo of a score of 
dead summers lingers yet in those dim recesses. 

— Do I remember Byron's line about '^striking the 
electric chain'? — To be sure I do. I sometimes 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 21 7 

think the less the hint that stirs the automatic ma- 
chinery of association, the more easily this moves us. 
What can be more trivial than that old story of 
opening the folio Shakespeare that used to lie in some 
ancient English hall and finding the flakes of Christ- 
mas pastry between its leaves, shut up in them per- 
haps a hundred years ago? And, lo! as one looks 
on these poor relics of a bygone generation, the uni- 
verse changes in the twinkling of an eye; old George 
the Second is back again, and the elder Pitt is coming 
into power, and General Wolfe is a fine, promising 
young man, and over the Channel they are pulling 
the Sieur Damines to pieces with wild horses, and 
across the Atlantic the Indians are tomahawking 
Hirams and Jonathans and Jonases at Fort William 
Henry; all the dead people who have been in the 
dust so long — even to the stout-armed cook that 
made the pastry — are alive again; the planet un- 
winds a hundred of its luminous coils, and the pre- 
cession of the equinoxes is retraced on the dial of 
heaven! And all this for a bit of pie crust! 

— I will thank you for that pie, — said the pro- 
voking young fellow whom I have named repeatedly. 
He looked at it for a moment, and put his hands to 
his eyes as if moved. — I was thinking, — he said 
indistinctly — 

— How ? What is't ? — said our landlady. 

— I was thinking — said he — who was king of 
England when this old pie was baked, — and it made 



2i8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

me feel bad to think how long he must have been 
dead. 

[Our landlady is a decent body, poor, and a 
widow, of course; cela va sans dire. She told me her 
story once; it was as if a grain of corn that had 
been ground and bolted had tried to individualize 
itself by a special narrative. There was the wooing 
and the wedding, — the start in life, — the disap- 
pointment, — the children she had buried, — the 
struggle against fate, — the dismantUng of life, first 
of its small luxuries, and then of its comforts, — the 
broken spirits, — the altered character of the one on 
whom she leaned, — and at last the death that came 
and drew the black curtain between her and all her 
earthly hopes. 

I never laughed at my landlady after she had told 
me her story, but I often cried, — not those pattering 
tears that run off the eaves upon our neighbors' 
grounds, the stillicidium of self-conscious sentinient, 
but those which steal noiselessly through their con- 
duits until they reach the cisterns lying round about 
the heart; those tears that we weep inwardly with 
unchanging features; — such I did shed for her often 
when the imps of the boarding-house Inferno tugged 
at her soul with their red-hot pincers.] 

Young man, — I said, — the pasty you speak 
lightly of is not old, but courtesy to those who labor 
to serve us, especially if they are of the weaker sex, 
is very old, and yet well worth retaining. May I 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 219 

recommend to you the following caution, as a guide, 
whenever you are dealing with a woman, or an artist, 
or a poet; — if you are handling an editor or politi- 
cian, it is superfluous advice. I take it from the back 
of one of those little French toys which contain paste- 
board figures moved by a small running stream of 
fine sand; Benjamin Franklin will translate it for 
you: '^Quoiqu^elle soil tres solidement montee il faut 
ne pas brutaliser la machine,''^ — I will thank you 
for the pie, if you please. 

[I took more of it than was good for me, — as much 
as 85°, I should think, — and had an indigestion in 
consequence. While I was suffering from it, I wrote 
some sadly desponding poems, and a theological essay 
which took a very .melancholy view of creation. 
When I got better I labeled them all ^^ Pie-crust," 
and laid them by as scarecrows and solemn warnings, 
I have a number of books on my shelves that I should 
like to label with some such title; but, as they have 
great names on their title-pages, — Doctors of Di- 
vinity, some of them, — it wouldn't do.] . . . 

— There is no power I envy so much — said the 
divinity-student — as that of seeing analogies and 
making comparisons. I don't understand how it is 
that some minds are continually coupling thoughts 
or objects that seem not in the least related to each 
other, until all at once they are put in a certain 
light, and you wonder that you did not always see 
that they were as Hke as a pair of twins. It appears 
to me a sort of miraculous gift. 



220 BEST AMERICAKT ESSAYS 

[He is rather a nice young man, and I think has 
an appreciation of the higher mental quahties re- 
markable for one of his years and training. I try 
his head occasionally as housewives try eggs, — give 
it an intellectual shake and hold it up to the light, so 
to speak, to see if it has life in it, actual or potential, 
or only contains lifeless albumen.] 

You call it miraculous^ — I replied, — tossing the 
expression with my facial eminence, a little smartly, I 
fear. — Two men are walking by the polyphloesboean 
ocean, one of them having a small tin cup with which 
he can scoop up a gill of sea- water when he will, and 
the other nothing but his hands, which will hardly 
hold water at all, — and you call the tin cup a mirac- 
ulous possession! It is the ocean that is the miracle, 
my infant apostle! Nothing is clearer than that all 
things are in all things, and that just according to 
the intensity and extension of our mental being we 
shall see the many in the one and the one in the 
many. Did Sir Isaac think what he was saying 
when he made his speech about the ocean, — the 
child and the pebbles, you know ? Did he mean to 
speak sHghtingly of a pebble ? Of a spherical solid 
which stood sentinel over its compartment of space 
before the stone that became the pyramids had grown 
solid, and has watched it until now! A body which 
knows all the currents of force that traverse the 
globe; which holds by invisible threads to the ring 
of Saturn and the belt of Orion! A body from the 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 221 

contemplation of which an archangel could infer the 
entire inorganic universe as the simplest of corollaries! 
A throne of the all-pervading Deity, who has guided 
its every atom since the rosary of heaven was strung 
with beaded stars ! 

So, — to return to our walk by the ocean, — if all 
that poetry has dreamed, all that insanity has raved, 
all that maddening narcotics have driven through the 
brains of men, or smothered passion nursed in the 
fancies of women, — if the dreams of colleges and 
convents and boarding-schools, — if every human 
feeling that sighs, or smiles, or curses, or shrieks, or 
groans, should bring all their innumerable images, 
such as come with every hurried heart-beat, — the 
epic which held them all, though its letters filled the 
zodiac, would be but a cupful from the infinite ocean 
of similitudes and analogies that rolls through the 
universe. 

[The divinity-student honored himself by the way 
in which he received this. He did not swallow it at 
once, neither did he reject it; but he took it as a 
pickerel takes the bait, and carried it off with him to 
his hole (in the fourth story) to deal with at his 
leisure.] . . . 

— I have often seen pianoforte players and singers 
make such strange motions over their instruments or 
song-books that I wanted to laugh at them. ^^ Where 
did our friends pick up all these fine ecstatic airs ? " 
I would say to myself. Then I would remember My 



222 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

Lady in "Marriage a la Mode/' and amuse myself 
with thinking how affectation was the same thing in 
Hogarth's time and in our own. But one day I 
bought me a canary-bird and hung him up in a cage 
at my window. By and by he found himself at 
home, and began to pipe his little tunes; and there he 
was, sure enough, swimming and waving about, with 
all the droopings and liftings and languishing side- 
turnings of the head that I had laughed at. And now 
I should like to ask. Who taught him all this? — and 
me, through him, that the foolish head was not the 
one swinging itself from side to side and bowing and 
nodding over the music, but that other which was 
passing its shallow and self-satisfied judgment on a 
creature made of finer clay than the frame which 
carried that same head upon its shoulders ? . . . 

— Weaken moral obligations? — No, not weaken, 
but define them. When I preach that sermon I 
spoke of the other day, I shall have to lay down 
some principles not fully recognized in some of your 
text-books. 

I should have to begin with one most formidable 
preliminary. You saw an article the other day in 
one of the journals, perhaps, in which some old 
Doctor or other said quietly that patients were very 
apt to be fools and cowards. But a great many of 
the clergyman's patients are not only fools and 
cowards, but also liars. 

[Immense sensation at the table. — Sudden retire- 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 223 

ment of the angular female in oxydated bombazine. 
Movement of adhesion — as they say in the Chamber 
of Deputies — on the part of the young fellow they 
call John. Falling of the old-gentleman-opposite's 
lower jaw — (gravitation is beginning to get the 
better of him). Our landlady to Benjamin Franklin, 
briskly, — Go to school right off, there's a good boy! 
Schoolmistress curious, — takes a quick glance at 
divinity-student. Divinity-student slightly flushed; 
draws his shoulders back a little, as if a big false- 
hood — or truth — had hit him in the forehead. 
Myself calm.] ... 

— If you think I have used rather strong language, 
I shall have to read something to you out of the book 
of this keen and witty scholar, — the great Erasmus, 
— who "laid the egg of the Reformation which 
Luther hatched.'' Oh, you never read his Naufra- 
giuMj or " Shipwreck," did you ? Of course not; for, 
if you had, I don't think you would have given me 
credit — or discredit — for entire originaUty in that 
speech of mine. That men are cowards in the con- 
templation of futurity he illustrates by the extraor- 
dinary antics of many on board the sinking vessel; 
that they are fools, by their praying to the sea, and 
making promises to bits of wood from the true cross, 
and all manner of similar nonsense; that they are 
fools, cowards, and liars all at once, by this story: 
I will put it into rough English for you. — "I couldn't 
help laughing to hear one fellow bawling out, so that 



224 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

he might be sure to be heard, a promise to Saint 
Christopher of Paris — the monstrous statue in the 
great church there — that he would give him a wax 
taper as big as himself. ^ Mind what you promise ! ' 
said an acquaintance that stood near him, poking 
him with his elbow; ^you couldn't pay for it, if you 
sold all your things at auction.' 'Hold your tongue, 
you donkey!' said the fellow, — but softly, so that 
Saint Christopher should not hear him, — ' do you 
think I'm in earnest? If I once get my foot on dry 
ground, catch me giving him so much as a tallow 
candle!'" 

Now, therefore, remembering that those who have 
been loudest in their talk about the great subject of 
which we were speaking have not necessarily been 
wise, brave, and true men, but, on the contrary, have 
very often been wanting in one or two or all of the 
qualities these words imply, I should expect to find 
a good many doctrines current in the schools which I 
should be obliged to call foolish, cowardly, and false. 

— So you would abuse other people's beliefs, sir, 
and yet not tell us your own creed! — said the divin- 
ity-student, coloring up with a spirit for which I liked 
him all the better. 

— I have a creed, — I replied; none better, and 
none shorter. It is told in two words, — the two first 
of the Paternoster. And when I say these words I 
mean them. And when I compared the human will 
to a drop in a crystal, and said I meant to define 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 225 

moral obligations, and not weaken them, this was 
what I intended to express: that the fluent, self- 
determining power of human beings is a very strictly 
limited agency in the universe. The chief planes 
of its enclosing solid are, of course, organization, 
education, condition. Organization may reduce the 
power of the will to nothing, as in some idiots; and 
from this zero the scale mounts upwards by slight 
gradations. Education is only second to nature. 
Imagine all the infants born this year in Boston and 
Timbuctoo to change places! Condition does less, 
but ^^Give me neither poverty nor riches" was the 
prayer of Agur, and with good reason. If there is 
any improvement in modern theology, it is in getting 
out of the region of pure abstractions and taking 
these everyday working forces into account. The 
great theological question now heaving and throbbing 
in the minds of Christian men is this: — 

No, I won't talk about these things now. My 
remarks might be repeated, and it would give my 
friends pain to see with what personal incivilities I 
should be visited. Besides, what business has a 
mere boarder to be talking about such things at a 
breakfast-table? Let him make puns. To be sure, 
he was brought up among the Christian fathers, and 
learned his alphabet out of a quarto 'Concilium 
Tridentinum.'' He has also heard many thousand 
theological lectures by men of various denomina- 
tions; and it is not at all to the credit of these 



226 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

teachers, if he is not fit by this time to express an 
opinion on theological matters. 

I know well enough that there are some of you 
who had a great deal rather see me stand on my head 
than use it for any purpose of thought. . . . 

— Well, I can't be savage with you for wanting to 
laugh, and I Uke to make you laugh, well enough, 
when I can. But then observe this: if the sense 
of the ridiculous is one side of an impressible nature, 
it is very well; but if that is all there is in a man, he 
had better have been an ape at once, and so have 
stood at the head of his profession. Laughter and 
tears are meant to turn the wheel of the same ma- 
chinery of sensibiUty ; one is wind-power, and the other 
water-power; that is all. I have often heard the 
Professor talk about hysterics as being Nature's 
cleverest illustration of the reciprocal convertibility 
of the two states of which these acts are the mani- 
festations; but you may see it every day in chil- 
dren; and if you want to choke with stifled tears a 
sight of the transition, as it shows itself in older 
years, go and see Mr. Blake play Jesse Rural, , , . 

— Oh, indeed, no ! — I am not ashamed to make 
you laugh, occasionally. I think I could read you 
something I have in my desk which would probably 
make you smile. Perhaps I will read it one of these 
days, if you are patient with me when I am sentimental 
and reflective; not just now. The ludicrous has its 
place ^[n the universe; it is not a human invention, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 227 

but one of the Divine ideas, illustrated in the practi- 
cal jokes of kittens and monkeys long before Aris- 
tophanes or Shakespeare. How curious it is that we 
always consider solemnity and the absence of all 
gay surprises and encounter of wits as essential to the 
idea of the future life of those whom we thus deprive 
of half their faculties and then call blessed I There 
are not a few who, even in this life, seem to be pre- 
paring themselves for that smileless eternity to which 
they look forward, by banishing all gayety from their 
hearts and all joyousness from their countenances. 
I meet one such in the street not unfrequently, a 
person of intelligence and education, but who gives 
me (and all that he passes) such a rayless and chilling 
look of recognition, — something as if he were one 
of Heaven's assessors, come down to "doom" every 
acquaintance he met, — that I have sometimes 
begun to sneeze on the spot, and gone home with a 
violent cold, dating from that instant. I don't 
doubt he would cut his kitten's tail off, if he caught 
her playing with it. Please tell me, who taught her 
to play with it ? 

No, no! — give me a chance to talk to you, my 
fellow-boarders, and you need not be afraid that I 
shall have any scruples about entertaining you, if I 
can do it, as well as giving you some of my serious 
thoughts, and perhaps my sadder fancies. I know 
nothing in English or any other literature more ad- 
mirable than that sentiment of Sir Thomas Browne: 



228 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

"Every man truly lives, so long as he acts his 
nature, or some way makes good the faculties 
of himself.'' 

I find the great thing in this world is not so much 
where we stand, as in what direction we are moving. 
To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes 
with the wind and sometimes against it, — but we 
must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor. There is 
one very sad thing in old friendships, to every mind 
that is really moving onward. It is this: that one 
cannot help using his early friends as the seaman 
uses the log, to mark his progress. . . . 

Don't misunderstand that metaphor of heaving the 
log, I beg you. It is merely a smart way of saying 
that we cannot avoid measuring our rate of move- 
ment by those with whom we have long been in the 
habit of comparing ourselves; and when they once 
become stationary, we can get our reckoning from 
them with painful accuracy. We see just what we 
were when they were our peers, and can strike the 
balance between that and whatever we may feel our- 
selves to be now. No doubt we may sometimes be 
mistaken. If we change our last simile to that very 
old and familiar one of a fleet leaving the harbor and 
sailing in company for some distant region, we can 
get what we want out of it. There is one of our 
companions ; — her streamers were torn into rags be- 
fore she had got into the open sea, then by and by 
her sails blew out of the ropes one after another, the 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 229 

waves swept her deck, and as night came on we left 
her a seeming wreck, as we flew under our pyramid 
of canvas. But lo! at dawn she is still in sight, — it 
may be in advance of us. Some deep ocean-current 
has been moving her on, strong, but silent, — yes, 
stronger than these noisy winds that puff our sails 
until they are swollen as the cheeks of jubilant cher- 
ubim. And when at last the black steam-tug with 
the skeleton arms, which comes out of the mist sooner 
or later and takes us all in tow, grapples her and goes 
off panting and groaning with her, it is to that harbor 
where all wrecks are refitted, and where, alas! we, 
towering in our pride, may never come. . . . 

— Did I not say to you a little while ago that the 
universe swam in an ocean of similitudes and analo- 
gies? I will not quote Cowley, or Burns, or Words- 
worth, just now, to show you what thoughts were 
suggested to them by the simplest natural objects, 
such as a flower or a leaf; but I will read you a few 
lines, if you do not object, suggested by looking at 
a section of one of those chambered shells to which 
is given the name of Pearly Nautilus. We need not 
trouble ourselves about the distinction between this 
and the Paper Nautilus, the Argonauta of the an- 
cients. The name applied to both shows that each 
has long been compared to a ship, as you may see 
more fully in Webster's Dictionary, or the ^^Ency- 
clopedia," to which he refers. If you will look into 
Roget's Bridgewater Treatise, you will find a figure of 



230 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

one of these shells, and a section of it. The last will 
show you the series of enlarging compartments suc- 
cessively dwelt in by the animal that inhabits the 
shell, which is built in a widening spiral. Can you 
find no lesson in this ? 



THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS 

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign. 

Sails the unshadowed main, — 

The venturous bark that flings 
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings, 

And coral reefs lie bare. 
Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair. 

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl; 

Wrecked is the ship of pearl ! 

And every chambered cell. 
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell, 
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell. 

Before thee lies revealed, — 
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed! 

Year after year beheld the silent toil 

That spread his lustrous coil ; 

Still, as the spiral grew, 
He left the past year's dwelling for the new. 
Stole with soft step its shining archway through, 

Built up its idle door. 
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more. 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 23 1 

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee, 

Child of the wandering sea, 

Cast from her lap forlorn ! 
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born 
Than ever Triton blew from wreathM horn ! 

While on mine ear it rings, 
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings : — 

Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 

As the swift seasons roll ! 

Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea! 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

1811-1896 



Of New England birth and training, a daughter of the 
famous Dr. Lyman Beecher, this lady went in her twenty- 
first year (1832) to Cincinnati, when her father became presi- 
dent of Lane Theological Seminary. Shortly after she was 
married to Professor Calvin E. Stowe. Amid increasing 
family cares she was an industrious writer of articles and tales, 
and in 1849 collected some of these, in "The Mayflower; or 
Sketches of the Descendants of the Pilgrims." In 1851 the 
National Era of Washington asked her to write a story of 
slave life. In youth she had visited Kentucky, and her later 
residence just across the Ohio River in Cincinnati familiarized 
her with the negro character and with incessant cases of escap- 
ing fugitives. She had learned the best and the worst and the 
average result of slavery; her heart burned; the request fell 
upon prepared ground. She began " Uncle Tom's Cabin " 
as a brief tale, but it grew upon her; she was rapt with the 
power of it. The story seized upon the world ; not only in 
America, where it was potent in arousing anti-slavery senti- 
ment to a passion, but in England, and in twenty or more 
countries into whose languages it was rapidly translated. 

Then came "Dred" (1856) another tale of slavery; and then 
a series of notable novels of New England life and character 
in which her keen perception, thoughtful reflection, captivat- 
ing wit and humor, her intelligence and her ardent religious 
nature found scope, presented in a style, fluent, graceful, and 
alluring. The best known of these are: ''The Minister's 
Wooing" (1859), from which a chapter on Romance is here 
given, ''The Pearl of Orr's Island" (1862), "Old Town 
Folks" (1869), and "Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories" (1871). 
"Agnes of Sorrento" (1864) is a medieval romance, souvenir 
of a winter spent in Italy, and luminous with its atmosphere. 

Mrs. Stowe was slight of person, somewhat quaint but 
charming in companionship, devotedly unselfish, spiritual in 
nature, and of a saint-like life. Her place as writer is secure 
in history, and in the hearts of her readers. 

234 



ROMANCE 

There is no word in the English language more 
unceremoniously kicked and cuffed about, by what 
are called sensible people, than the word romance. 
When Mr. Smith or Mr. Stubbs has brought every 
wheel of life into such range and order that it is one 
steady, daily grind, — when they themselves have 
come into the habits and attitudes of the patient 
donkey who steps round and round the endlessly 
turning wheel of some machinery, then they fancy 
that they have gotten ^Hhe victory that overcometh 
the world." 

All but this dead grind, and the dollars that come 
through the mill, is by them thrown into one waste 
"catch-air' and labeled Romance, Perhaps there 
was a time in Mr. Smith's youth, — he remembers 
it now, — when he read poetry, when his cheek 
was wet with strange tears, when a little song, ground 
out by an organ-grinder in the street^ had power to 
set his heart beating and bring a mist before his eyes. 
Ah, in those days he had a vision ! — a pair of soft 
eyes stirred him strangely; a little weak hand was 
laid on his manhood, and it shook and trembled; 
and then came all the humility, the aspiration, the 
fear, the hope, the high desire, the troubling of the 

235 



236 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

waters by the descending angel of love, — and a little 
more and Mr. Smith might have become a man, 
instead of a banker ! He thinks of it now, sometimes, 
as he looks across the fireplace after dinner and sees 
Mrs. Smith asleep, innocently shaking the bouquet 
of pink bows and Brussels lace that waves over her 
placid red countenance. 

Mrs. Smith wasn't his first love, nor, indeed, any 
love at all; but they agree reasonably well. And 
as for poor Nellie, — well, she is dead and buried, 

— all that was stuff and romance. Mrs. Smith's 
money set him up in business, and Mrs. Smith is a 
capital manager, and he thanks God that he isn't 
romantic, and tells Smith Junior not to read poetry 
or novels, and to stick to realities. 

^^This is the victory that overcometh the world," 

— to learn to be fat and tranquil, to have warm fires 
and good dinners, to hang your hat on the same peg 
at the same hour every day, to sleep soundly all night, 
and never to trouble your head with a thought or 
imagining beyond. 

But there are many people besides Mr. Smith 
who have gained this victory, — who have strangled 
their higher nature and buried it, and built over its 
grave the structure of their life, the better to keep 
it down. The fascinating Mrs. T., whose life is a 
whirl between ball and opera, point-lace, diamonds, 
and schemings of admiration for herself, and of estab- 
lishments for her daughters, — there was a time, 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 237 

if you will believe me, when that proud, worldly 
woman was so humbled, under the touch of some 
mighty power, that she actually thought herself 
capable of being a poor man's wife. She thought 
she could live in a little, mean house on no-matter- 
what-street, with one servant, and make her own 
bonnets and mend her own clothes, and sweep the 
house Mondays, while Betty washed, — all for 
what ? All because she thought that there was a 
man so noble, so true, so good, so high-minded, that 
to live with him in poverty, to be guided by him in 
adversity, to lean on him in every rough place of life, 
was a something nobler, better, purer, more satisfy- 
ing, than French laces, opera boxes, and Madame 
Roget's best gowns. 

Unfortunately, this was all romance, — there was 
no such man. There was, indeed, a person of very 
common, self-interested aims of worldly nature, 
whom she had credited at sight with an unlimited 
draft on all her better nature; and when the hour 
of discovery came, she awoke from her dream with 
a start and a laugh, and ever since has despised aspi- 
ration, and been busy with the realities of life, and 
feeds poor little Mary Jane, who sits by her in the 
opera box there, with all the fruit which she has 
picked from the bitter tree of knowledge. There is 
no end of the epigrams and witticisms which she can 
throw out, this elegant Mrs. T., on people who marry 
for love, lead prosy, worky lives, and put on their best 



238 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



I 



cap with pink ribbons for Sunday. ''Mary Jane 
shall never make a fool of herself;'' but, even as she 
speaks, poor Mary Jane's heart is dying within her 
at the vanishing of a pair of whiskers from an op- 
posite box, — which whiskers the poor little fool has 
credited with a resume drawn from her own imagin- 
ings of all that is graudest and most heroic, most 
worshipful in man. By and by, when Mrs. T. finds 
the glamour has fallen on her daughter, she won- 
ders; she has "tried to keep novels out of the girl's 
way, — where did she get these notions ? " 

All prosaic, and all bitter, disenchanted people talk 
as if poets and novelists made romance. They do, 
— just as much as craters make volcanoes, — no 
more. What is romance ? whence comes it ? Plato 
spoke to the subject wisely, in his quaint way, some 
two thousand years ago, when he said, ''Man's soul, 
in a former state, was winged, and soared among the 
gods, and so it comes to pass that, in this life, when the 
soul, by the power of music or poetry, or the sight of 
beauty, hath her remembrance quickened, forthwith 
there is a struggling and a pricking pain as of wings 
trying to come forth, — even as children in teething." 
And if an old heathen, two thousand years ago, dis- 
coursed thus gravely of the romantic part of our 
nature, whence comes it that in Christian lands we 
think in so pagan a way of it, and turn the whole care 
of it to ballad-makers, romancers, and opera-singers? 

Let us look up in fear and reverence and say, " God 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 239 

is the great maker of romance. He, from whose hand 
came man and woman, — He who strung the great 
harp of Existence with all its wild and wonderful 
and manifold chords, and attuned them to one 
another, — He is the great Poet of life." Every 
impulse of beauty, or heroism, and every craving 
for purer love, fairer perfection, nobler type and 
style of being than that which closes like a prison- 
house around us, in the dim, daily walk of life, is 
God's breath, God's impulse, God's reminder to the 
soul that there is something higher, sweeter, purer, 
yet to be attained. Therefore, man or woman, when 
thy ideal is shattered, — as shattered a thousand 
times it must be, — when the vision fades, the rap- 
ture burns out, turn not away in skepticism and bit- 
terness, saying, ^^ There is nothing better for a man 
than that he should eat and drink," but rather cherish 
the revelations of those hours as prophecies and fore- 
shadowings of something real and possible, yet to 
be attained in the manhood of immortality. The 
scoffing spirit that laughs at romance is an apple of 
the Devil's own handling from the bitter tree of 
knowledge; it opens the eyes only to see eternal 
nakedness. 

If ever you have had a romantic, uncalculating 
friendship, — a boundless worship and belief in some 
hero of your soul, — if ever you have so loved, that 
all cold prudence, all selfish worldly considerations 
have gone down Uke driftwood before a river flooded 



240 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

with new rain from heaven, so that you even forgot 
yourself, and were ready to cast your whole being 
into the chasm of existence, as an offering before the 
feet of another, and all for nothing, — if you awoke 
bitterly betrayed and deceived, still give thanks 
to God that you have had one glimpse of heaven. 
The door now shut will open again. Rejoice that 
the noblest capability of your eternal inheritance has 
been made known to you ; treasure it, as the highest 
honor of your being, that ever you could so feel, — 
that so divine a guest ever possessed your soul. 

By such experiences are we taught the pathos, the 
sacredness of life ; and if we use them wisely, our eyes 
will ever after be anointed to see what poems, what 
romances, what sublime tragedies lie around us in 
the daily walk of life, *^ written not with ink, but 
on fleshly tables of the heart.'' The dullest street of 
the most prosaic town has matter in it for more 
smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than 
ever were written in story or sung in poem ; the real- 
ity is there, of which the romancer is the second-hand 
recorder. 

So much of a plea we put in boldly, because we 
foresee grave heads beginning to shake over our 
history, and doubts rising in reverend and discreet 
minds whether this history is going to prove any- 
thing but a love-story, after all. 

We do assure you, right reverend sir, and you, most 
discreet madam, that it is not going to prove any • 



I 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 241 

thing else; and you will find, if you will follow us, 
that there is as much romance burning under the 
snowbanks of cold Puritan preciseness as if Dr. 
Hopkins had been brought up to attend operas instead 
of metaphysical preaching, and Mary had been nour- 
ished on Byron's poetry instead of ^'Edwards on the 
Affections.'' 

The innocent credulities, the subtle deceptions, that 
were quietly at work under the grave, white curls 
of the Doctor's wig were exactly of the kind which 
have beguiled man in all ages, when near the sover- 
eign presence of her who is born for his destiny ; and 
as for Mary, what did it avail her that she could say 
the Assembly's Catechism from end to end without 
tripping, and that every habit of her life beat time 
to practical realities, steadily as the parlor clock? 
The wildest Italian singer or dancer, nursed on noth- 
ing but excitement from her cradle, never was more 
thoroughly possessed by the awful and solemn 
mystery of woman's life than this Puritan girl. 

It is quite true that, the next morning after James' 
departure, she rose as usual in the dim gray, and was 
to be seen opening the kitchen door just at the mo- 
ment when the birds were giving the first drowsy 
stir and chirp, — and that she went on setting the 
breakfast-table for the two hired men, who were 
bound to the fields with the oxen, — and that then 
she went on skimming cream for the butter, and get- 
ting ready to churn, and making up biscuit for the 



242 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



J 



Doctor's breakfast, when he and they should sit 
down together at a somewhat later hour; and as she 
moved about, doing all these things, she sung various 
scraps of old psalm-tunes; and the good Doctor, who 
was then busy with his early exercises of devotion, 
listened, as he heard the voice, now here, now there, 
and thought about angels and the millennium. 
Solemnly and tenderly there floated in at his open 
study-window, through the breezy lilacs, mixed with 
low of kine and bleat of sheep and hum of early 
wakening life, the little silvery ripples of that singing, 
somewhat mournful in its cadence, as if a gentle soul 
were striving to hush itself to rest. ... 

The tone of life in New England, so habitually 
earnest and solemn, breathed itself in the grave and 
plaintive melodies of the tunes then sung in the 
churches; and so these words, though in the saddest 
minor key, did not suggest to the listening ear of the 
auditor anything more than that pensive religious 
calm in which he delighted to repose. A contrast 
indeed they were, in their melancholy earnestness, 
to the exuberant carolings of a robin, who, apparently 
attracted by them, perched himself hard by in the 
lilacs, and struck up such a merry roulade as quite 
diverted the attention of the fair singer; in fact, the 
intoxication breathed in the strain of this little mes- 
senger, whom God had feathered and winged and 
filled to the throat with ignorant joy, came in singu- 
lar contrast with the sadder notes breathed by that 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 243 

creature of so much higher mold and fairer clay, — 
that creature born for an immortal life. 

But the good Doctor was inly pleased when she 
sung, — and when she stopped, looked up from his 
Bible wistfully, as missing something, he knew not 
what; for he scarce thought how pleasant the little 
voice was, or knew he had been listening to it, — 
and yet he was in a manner enchanted by it, so 
thankful and happy that he exclaimed with fervor, 
'^ The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, 
I have a goodly heritage/' So went the world with 
him, full of joy and praise, because the voice and the 
presence wherein lay his unsuspected life were se- 
curely near, so certainly and constantly a part of his 
daily walk that he had not even the trouble to wish 
for them. But in that other heart, how was it? — 
how with the sweet saint that was talking to herself 
in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs ? 

The good child had remembered her mother's 
parting words the night before, — ^^Put your mind 
upon your duties," — and had begun her first con- 
scious exercise of thought with a prayer that grace 
might be given her to do it. But even as she spoke, 
mingling and interweaving with that golden thread 
of prayer was another consciousness, a life in another 
soul, as she prayed that the grace of God might over- 
shadow him, shield him from temptation, and lead 
him up to heaven; and this prayer so got the start 
of the other, that, ere she was aware, she had quite 



244 ^^^^ AMERICAN ESSAYS 

forgotten self, and was feeling, living, thinking in 
that other life. 

The first discovery she made, when she looked out 
into the fragrant orchard, whose perfumes steamed in 
at her window, and listened to the first chirping of 
birds among the old apple-trees, was one that has 
astonished many a person before her; it was this: she 
found that all that had made life interesting to her 
was suddenly gone. She herself had not known that, 
for the month past, since James came from sea, she 
had been hving in an enchanted land, — that New- 
port harbor, and every rock and stone, and every mat 
of yellow seaweed on the shore, that the two-mile 
road between the cottage and the white house of 
Zebedee Marvyn, every mullein-stalk, every juniper- 
tree, had all had a light and a charm which were sud- 
denly gone. There had not been an hour in the day 
for the last four weeks that had not had its unsus- 
pected interest, — because he was at the white house; 
because, possibly, he might be going by, or coming in; 
nay, even in church, when she stood up to sing, and 
thought she was thinking only of God, had she 
not been conscious of that tenor voice that poured 
itself out by her side ? and though afraid to turn her 
head that way, had she not felt that he was there 
every moment, — heard every word of the sermon 
and prayer for him ? The very vigilant care which 
her mother had taken to prevent private interviews 
had only served to increase the interest by throwing 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 245 

over it the veil of constraint and mystery. Silent 
looks, involuntary starts, things indicated, not ex- 
pressed, — these are the most dangerous, the most 
seductive aliment of thought to a delicate and sensi- 
tive nature. If things were said out, they might not 
be said wisely, — they might repel by their freedom, 
or disturb by their unfitness; but what is only looked 
is sent into the soul through the imagination, which 
makes of it all that the ideal faculties desire. 

In a refined and exalted nature, it is very seldom 
that the feeling of love, when once thoroughly 
aroused, bears any sort of relation to the reality 
of the object. It is commonly an enkindling of the 
whole power of the souFs love for whatever she 
considers highest and fairest; it is, in fact, the love 
of something divine and unearthly, which, by a sort 
of illusion, connects itself with a personality. Prop- 
erly speaking, there is but One true, eternal Object 
of all that the mind conceives, in this trance of its 
exaltation. Disenchantment must come, of course; 
and in a love which terminates in happy marriage 
there is a tender and gracious process, by which, 
without shock or violence, the ideal is gradually 
sunk in the real, which, though found faulty and 
earthly, is still ever tenderly remembered as it seemed 
under the morning light of that enchantment. . . . 

Nor was Mary wrong; for, as to every leaf and 
every flower there is an ideal to which the growth of 
the plant is constantly urging, so is there an ideal to 



246 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

every human being, — a perfect form -in which it 
might appear, were every defect removed and every 
characteristic excellence stimulated to the highest 
point. Once in an age God sends to some of us a 
friend who loves in us, not a false imagining, an un- 
real character, but, looking through all the rubbish 
of our imperfections, loves in us the divine ideal of 
our nature, — loves, not the man that we are, but 
the angel that we may be. Such friends seem in- 
spired by a divine gift of prophecy, — like the mother 
of St. Augustine, who, in the midst of the wayward, 
reckless youth of her son, beheld him in a vision, 
standing, clothed in white, a ministering priest at the 
right hand of God, — as he has stood for long ages 
since. Could a mysterious foresight unveil to us this 
resurrection form of the friends with whom we daily 
walk, compassed about with formal infirmity, we 
should follow them with faith and reverence through 
all the disgmses of human faults and weaknesses, 
'^waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God.'^ 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 
1813-1887 



Between this man and his lovely sister, Mrs. Stowe, there 
was an intimate comradeship and confidence from babyhood 
to the end of life; they were twins of noble goodness. And 
as to his great powers, his personal influence w^as wider and 
more potent than that of any other man of his time — not an 
official influence, of governmental or military or institutional 
authority, but the result of the man himself. As preacher, 
pastor, lecturer, orator, editor, writer, citizen, he was very 
great, and so recognized. 

Beecher's literary w^ork was chiefly in many volumes of 
sermons and religious addresses, but he wrote a most inspiring 
''Life of Jesus the Christ"; a novel of New England life, 
"Norwood," a genuine Yankee product; and many editorial 
articles for the papers he edited, — The Western Farmer and 
Gardener J when he was in the West, and the Independent 
and The Christian Union when he lived in Brooklyn. Be- 
sides these he wrote "Star Papers" (signed with a *) for the 
Indepejtdenl, and numberless brief essays and sketches for other 
papers, many of which have been published in book form. 
In these he gave freer play to the humor which gleamed and 
laughed under the surface of all his work, occasionally coming 
out, even in his sermons. Like all real orators, he knew the 
secret of the kinship between smile and tear, and his greai. 
intellect, poetic fancy, and "power of speech to move men's 
blood" owed not a little to his exuberant sense of humor. 
But his genius was essentially that of the orator, and the trifle 
taken to represent him here (one of the "Star Papers") shows 
his sympathy with nature, his imaginative use of common 
things, his shrewd sense, his playful mood, and the native 
religious trend of his spirit rather than his intellectual strength. 



248 



DREAM-CULTURE 

Lenox, Mass., August lo, 1854. 

There is something in the owning of a piece of 
ground, which affects me as did the old ruins in Eng- 
land. I am free to confess that the value of a farm is 
not chiefly in its crops of cereal grain, its orchards of 
fruit, and in its herds; but in those larger and more 
easily reapt harvests of associations, fancies, and 
dreamy broodings which it begets. From boyhood I 
have associated classical civic virtues and old heroic 
integrity with the soil. No one who has peopled his 
young brain with the fancies of Grecian mythology, but 
comes to feel a certain magical sanctity for the earth. 
The very smell of fresh-turned earth brings up as 
many dreams and visions of the country as sandal- 
wood does of oriental scenes. At any rate, I feel, 
in walking under these trees and about these slopes, 
something of that enchantment of the vague and 
mysterious glimpses of the past, which I once felt 
about the ruins of Kenilworth Castle. For thou- 
sands of years this piece of ground hath wrought its 
tasks. Old slumberous forests used to darken it; 
innumerable deer have trampled across it; foxes 
have blinked through its bushes, and wolves have 

249 



250 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



4 

lis- ■ 



howled and growled as they pattered along its rus- 
tling leaves with empty maws. How many birds ; how 
many flocks of pigeons, thousands of years ago; 
how many hawks dashing wildly among them; 
how many insects, nocturnal and diurnal; how 
many mailed bugs, and limber serpents, gliding 
among mossy stones, have had possession here, 
before my day! It will not be long before I too shall 
be as wasted and recordless as they. 

Doubtless the Indians made this a favorite resort. 
Their sense of beauty in natural scenery is proverbial. 
Where else, in all this region, could they find a more 
glorious amphitheater? But thick-studded forests 
may have hidden from them this scenic glory, and 
left it to solace another race. I walk over the ground 
wondering what lore of wild history I should read if 
all that ever Uved upon tlais round and sloping hill 
had left an invisible record, unreadable except by 
such eyes as mine, that seeing, see not, and not see- 
ing, do plainly see. 

Then, while I stand upon the crowning point of the 
hill, from which I can behold every foot of the hun- 
dred acres, and think what is going on, what gigantic 
powers are silently working, I feel as if all the work- 
manship that was stored in the Crystal Palace was 
not to be compared with the subtle machinery all 
over this round. What chemists could find solvents 
to liquefy these rocks? But soft rains and roots 
small as threads dissolve them and re-compose them 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 



251 



into stems and leaves. What an uproar, as if a hun- 
dred stone quarries were being wrought, if one should 
attempt to crush with hammers all the flint and 
quartz which the stroke of the dew powders noise- 
lessly! All this turf is but a camp of soldier-roots, 
that wage their battle upon the elements with end- 
less victory. There is a greater marvel in this defiant 
thistle, which wearies the farmer's wits, taxed for 
its extermination, than in all the repositories of New 
York or London. And these mighty trees, how 
easily do they pump up and sustain supplies of mois- 
ture that it would require scores of rattling engines to 
lift! This farm, it is a vast laboratory, full of expert 
chemists. It is a vast shop, full of noiseless machin- 
ists. And all this is mine! These rocks, that lie 
in bulk under the pasture-trees, and all this moss 
that loves to nestle in its crevices, and clasp the invisi- 
ble projections with its little clinging hands, and all 
these ferns and sumach, these springs and trickling 
issues, are mine! 

Let me not be puffed up with sudden wealth! Let 
me rule discreetly among my tenants. Let me see 
what tribes are mine. There are the black and glossy 
crickets, the gray crickets, the grasshoppers of every 
shape and hue, the silent, prudent toad, type of con- 
servative wisdom, wise-looking, but slow-hopping; 
the butterflies by day, and the moth and millers by 
night; all birds — wrens, sparrows, king-birds, blue- 
birds, robins, and those unnamed warblers that make 




252 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



the forests sad with their melancholy whistle. Besides 
these, who can register the sappers and miners that 
are always at work in the soil: angleworms, white 
grubs, and bugs that carry pick and shovel in the 
head? Who can muster all the mice that nest in 
the barn or nibble in the stubble-field, and all the 
beetles that sing base in the wood's edge to the shrill 
treble of gnats and myriad musquitoes ? These all 
are mine! 

Are they mine ? Is it my eye and my hand that 
mark their paths and circuits ? Do they hold their 
life from me, or do I give them their food in due sea- 
son ? Vastly as my bulk is greater than theirs, am 
I so much superior that I can despise, or even not 
admire ? Where is the strength of muscle by which 
I can spring fifty times the length of my body? 
That grasshopper's thigh lords it over mine. Spring 
up now in the evening air, and fly toward the lights 
that wink from yonder hillside! Ten million wings 
of despised flies and useless insects are mightier than 
hand or foot of mine. Each mortal thing carries 
some quality of distinguishing excellence by which it 
may glory, and say, "In this, I am first in all the 
world!'' 

Since the same hand made me that made them, and 
the same care feeds them that spreads my board, let 
there be fellowship between us. There is. I have 
signed articles of peace even with the abdominal 
spiders, who carry their fleece in their belly, and not 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 253 

on their back. It is agreed that they shall not cross 
the Danube of my doors, and I, on the other hand, 
will let them camp down, without wanton disturb- 
ance, in my whole domain beside! I, too, am but 
an insect on a larger scale. Are there not those who 
tread with unsounding feet through the invisible 
air, of being so vast, that I seem to them but a mite, 
a flitting insect? And of capacities so noble and 
eminent, that all the stores which I could bring of 
thought and feeUng to them would be but as the com- 
muning of a grasshopper with me, or the chirp of a 
sparrow ? 

No. It is not in the nature of true greatness to be 
exclusive and arrogant. If such noble shadows fill 
the realm, it is their nature to condescend and to 
spread their power abroad for the loving protection 
of those whose childhood is little, but whose immortal 
manhood shall yet, through their kind teaching, stand 
unabashed, and not ashamed, in the very royalty 
of heaven. Only vulgar natures employ their superi- 
ority to task and burden weaker natures. He whose 
genius and wisdom are but instruments of oppression, 
however covered and softened with lying names, is 
the beginning of a monster. The line that divides 
between the animal and the divine is the line of suf- 
fering. The animal, for its own pleasure, inflicts 
suffering. The divine endures suffering for another's 
pleasure. Not then when he went up to the propor- 
tions of original glory was Christ the greatest; but 



254 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



3 



when he descended, and wore our form, and bore our 
sins and sorrows, that by his stripes we might be 
healed! 

I have no vicarious mission for these populous 
insects. But I will at least not despise their little- 
ness nor trample upon their lives. Yet, how may I 
spare them ? At every step I must needs crush scores, 
and leave the wounded in my path! Already I have 
lost my patience with that intolerable fly, and slapped 
him out of being, and breathed out fiery vengeance 
against those mean conspirators that, night and day, 
suck my blood, hypocritically singing a grace before 
their meal! 

The chief use of a farm, if it be well selected, and 
of a proper soil, is to lie down upon. Mine is an 
excellent farm for such uses, and I thus cultivate it 
every day. Large crops are the consequence, of great 
deUght and fancies more than the brain can hold. 
My industry is exemplary. Though but a week here, 
I have lain down more hours and in more places than 
that hard-working brother of mine in the whole year 
that he has dwelt here. Strange that industrious 
lying down should come so naturally to me, and 
standing up and lazing about after the plow or behind 
his scythe, so naturally to him! My eyes against his 
feet! It takes me but a second to run down that 
eastern slope, across the meadow, over the road, up 
to that long hillside, (which the benevolent Mr. Dorr 
is so beautifully planting with shrubbery for my sake 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 255 

— blessings on him!) but his feet could not perform 
the task in less than ten minutes. I can spring from 
Grey Lock in the north, through the hazy air, over 
the wide sixty miles to the dome of the Taconic 
mountains in the south, by a simple roll of the eye- 
ball, a mere contraction of a few muscles. Now 
let any one try it with their feet, and two days would 
scant suffice! With my head I can sow the ground 
with glorious harvests; I can build barns, fill them 
with silky cows and nimble horses; I can pasture a 
thousand sheep, run innumerable furrows, sow every 
sort of seed, rear up forests just wherever the eye 
longs for them, build my house, like Solomon's 
Temple, without the sound of a hammer. Ah! 
mighty worker is the head! These farmers that 
use the foot and the hand, are much to be pitied. 
I can change my structures every day, without ex- 
pense. I can enlarge that gem of a lake that lies 
yonder, twinkling and rippling in the sunlight. 
I can pile up rocks where they ought to have been 
found, for landscape effect, and clothe them with the 
very pines that ought to grow over them. I can 
transplant every tree that I meet in my rides, and 
put it near my house without the drooping of a leaf. 

But of what use is all this fanciful using of the 
head ? It is a mere waste of precious time ! 

Yet, if it gives great delight, if it keeps the soul 
awake, sweet thoughts alive and sordid thoughts 
dead, if it brings one a little out of conceit with hard 



256 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



1 



economies, and penurious reality, and stingy self- 
conceit; if it be like a bath to the soul, in which it 
washes away the grime of human contacts, and the 
sweat and dust of life among selfish, sordid men; 
if it makes the thoughts more supple to climb along 
the ways where spiritual fruits do grow; and es- 
pecially, if it introduces the soul to a fuller conviction 
of the Great Unseen, and teaches it to esteem the 
visible as less real than things which no eye can see, 
or hands handle, it will have answered a purpose 
which is in vain sought among stupid convention- 
aUties. 

. At any rate, such a discourse of the thoughts with 
things that are beautiful, and such an opening of the 
soul to things which are sweet-breathed, will make 
one joyful at the time and tranquil thereafter. And 
if one fully beheves that the earth is the Lord's, 
and that God yet walks among leaves, and trees, 
in the cool of the day, he will not easily be persuaded 
to cast away the belief that all these vagaries and 
wild communings are but those of a child in his 
father's house, and that the secret springs of joy 
which they open are touched of God! 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

1819-1871 



Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Lowell studied law, 
and passed into literature. His earliest publication was a 
volume of love-poems, "A Year's Life" (1841), followed by 
''Poems" (1844), and in 1845 ''The Vision of Sir Launfal," an 
exquisite allegory of the Grail. The Mexican War occasioned 
his Yankee "Biglow Papers" (begun serially in 1846), sarcas- 
tically lashing the crawling before the slave-power which had 
made the war. His "Fable for Critics" (1848) was a witty 
satire on contemporary poets — including fun at his own 
expense. 

Meantime he wrote articles and reviews, had wandered in 
Europe and at home, and issued charming sketches of travel, 
and in 1857 became Professor of French, Spanish, and Italian 
in Harvard, while he was editor of the Atlantic Monthly during 
its first nine volumes, — a valuable task, — and from 1863 to 
1872 joined Charles Eliot Norton in editing the North 
American Review. During the Civil War a second series of 
"Biglow Papers" scourged secession as the first had scored 
slavery, with satire and fun. In 1865 came his grand "Com- 
memoration Ode." This, and the earlier "Concord Ode" and 
"Centennial Ode," were his most signal patriotic utterances. 

In 1877 Lowell went as United States Minister to Spain, 
and in 1879 to Great Britain, remaining till 1885, smoothing 
difficulties and winning good will. Later years produced admi- 
rable volumes of poetry, criticism, political and other essays. 

All in all, Lowell was the best-equipped literary American 
that has appeared : — as poet, fine-spirited, delicate, in sym- 
pathy with man and nature, artistic of touch; as critic, 
learned, discriminating, brilliant; as teacher, illuminating; as 
editor, of severe but catholic judgment and unerring taste; as 
humorist, genial, wittily sarcastic, with sober thought beneath 
the sparkle, his serious writing being lightened by a rare sub- 
tlety of humorous consciousness. As diplomat he was admi- 
rable, and as patriot his soul glowed from youth to death. 



258 



AT SEA 

The sea was meant to be looked at from shore, as 
mountains are from the plain. Lucretius made this 
discovery long ago, and was blunt enough to blurt it 
forth, romance and sentiment — in other words, the 
pretense of feeling what we do not feel — being in- 
ventions of a later day. To be sure, Cicero used to 
twaddle about Greek literature and philosophy, much 
as people do about ancient art nowadays; but I 
rather sympathize with those stout old Romans who 
despised both, and believed that to found an empire 
was as grand an achievement as to build an epic or to 
carve a statue. But though there might have been 
twaddle (as why not, since there was a Senate ?) , I 
rather think Petrarch was the first choragus of that 
sentimental dance which so long led young folks away 
from the realities of life like the piper of Hamelin, and 
whose succession ended, let us hope, with Chateau- 
briand. But for them, Byron, whose real strength lay 
in his sincerity, would never have talked about the 
"sea bounding beneath him like a steed that knows 
his rider,'' and all that sort of thing. Even if it had 
been true, steam has been as fatal to that part of the 
romance of the sea as to hand-loom weaving. But 
what say you to a twelve days' calm such as we dozed 

259 



26o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

through in mid- Atlantic and in mid- August? I 
know nothing so tedious at once and exasperating 
as that regular slap of the wilted sails when the ship 
rises and falls with the slow breathing of the sleeping 
sea, one greasy, brassy swell following another, slow, 
smooth, immitigable as the series of Wordsworth's 
'^ Ecclesiastical Sonnets.'' Even at his best, Nep- 
tune, in a tete-a-tete, has a way of repeating himself, an 
obtuseness to the ne quid nimis, that is stupefying. 
It reminds me of organ music and my good friend 
Sebastian Bach. A fugue or two will do very well; 
but a concert made up of nothing else is altogether 
too epic for me. There is nothing so desperately 
monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the 
cruelty of pirates. Fancy an existence in which the 
coming up of a clumsy finback whale, who says Fooh! 
to you solemnly as you lean over the tafirail, is an 
event as exciting as an election on shore! . . . 

The finback whale recorded just above has much 
the look of a brown-paper parcel, — the whitish 
stripes that run across him answering for the pack- 
thread. He has a kind of accidental hole in the top 
of his head, through which he pooh-poohs the rest of 
creation, and which looks as if it had been made by 
the chance thrust of a chestnut rail. He was our first 
event. Our second was harpooning a sunfish, which 
basked dozing on the lap of the sea, looking so much 
like the giant turtle of an alderman's dream, that I 
am persuaded he would have made mock- turtle- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 261 

soup rather than acknowledge his imposture. But 
he broke away jiist as they were hauHng him over 
the side, and sank placidly through the clear water, 
leaving behind him a crimson trail that wavered a 
moment and was gone. 

The sea, though, has better sights than these. 
When we were up with the Azores, we began to meet 
flying-fish and Portuguese men-of-war beautiful as 
the galley of Cleopatra, tiny craft that dared these 
seas before Columbus. I have seen one of the former 
rise from the crest of a wave, and, glancing from 
another some two hundred feet beyond, take a fresh 
flight of perhaps as long. How Calderon would have 
similized this pretty creature had he ever seen it! 
How would he have run him up and down the gamut 
of simile! If a fish, then a fish with wings; if a bird, 
then a bird with fins; and so on, keeping up the poor 
shuttlecock of a conceit as is his wont. Indeed, the 
poor thing is the most killing bait for a comparison, 
and I assure you I have three or four in my inkstand ; 
— but be calm, they shall stay there. Moore, who 
looked on all nature as a kind of Gradus ad Parnas- 
sum, a thesaurus of similitude, and spent his life in a 
game of What is my thought like? with himself, did 
the flying-fish on his way to Bermuda. So I leave 
him in peace. 

The most beautiful thing I have seen at sea, all the 
more so that I had never heard of it, is the trail of a 
shoal of fish through the phosphorescent water. It 



262 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

is like a flight of silver rockets, or the streaming of 
northern lights through that silent nether heaven. I 
thought nothing could go beyond that rustUng star- 
foam which was churned up by our ship's bows, or 
those eddies and disks of dreamy flame that rose and 
wandered out of sight behind us. 

'Twas fire our ship was plunging through, 
Gold fire that o'er the quarter flew; 
And wandering moons of idle flame 
Grew full and waned, and went and came, 
Dappling with light the huge sea snake 
That slid behind us in the wake. 

Another sight worth taking a voyage for is that of 
the sails by moonlight. Our course was ^^ south and 
by east, half south," so that w^e seemed bound for the 
full moon as she rolled up over our wavering horizon. 
Then I used to go forward to the bowsprit and look 
back. Our ship was a clipper, with every rag set, 
stunsails, sky-scrapers, and all; nor was it easy to 
believe that such a wonder could be built of canvas as 
that white many-storied pile of cloud that stooped 
over me, or drew back as we rose and fell with the 
waves. 

In the ocean-horizon I took untiring delight. It 
is the true magic-ci^de of expectation and conjecture 
— almost as good as a wishing-ring. What wfll rise 
over that edge we sail toward daily and never over- 
take? A sail ? an island ? the new shore of the Old 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 263 

World? Something rose every day, which I need not 
have gone so far to see, but at whose levee I was a 
much more faithful courtier than on shore. A cloud- 
less sunrise in mid-ocean is beyond comparison for 
simple grandeur. It is like Dante's style, bare and 
perfect. Naked sun meets naked sea, the true classic 
of nature. There may be more sentiment in morning 
on shore, — the shivering fairy- jewelry of dew, the 
silver point-lace of sparkling hoar-frost, — but there 
is also more complexity, more of the romantic. The 
one savors of the elder Edda, the other of the Minne- 
singers. 

And I thus floating, lonely elf, 

A kind of planet by myself, 

The mists draw up and furl away, 

And in the east a warming gray. 

Faint as the tint of oaken woods 

When o'er their buds May breathes and broods, 

Tells that the golden sunrise-tide 

Is lapsing up earth's thirsty side, 

Each moment purpling on the crest 

Of some stark billow farther west: 

And as the sea-moss droops and hears 

The gurgling flood that nears and nears, 

And then with tremulous content 

Floats out each thankful filament, 

So waited I until it came, 

God's daily miracle, — O shame 

That I had seen so many days 

Unthankful, without wondering praise, 



264 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

Not recking more this bliss of earth 

Than the cheap fire that Hghts my hearth ! 

But now glad thoughts and holy pour 

Into my heart, as once a year 

To San Miniato's open door, 

In long procession, chanting clear, 

Through slopes of sun, through shadows hoar, 

The coupled monks slow-climbing sing, 

And like a golden censer swing 

From rear to front, from front to rear 

Their alternating bursts of praise, 

Till the roof's fading seraphs gaze 

Down through an odorous mist that crawls 

Lingeringly up the darkened walls, 

And the dim arches, silent long, 

Are startled with triumphant song. 

I wrote yesterday that the sea still rimmed our prosy 
lives with mystery and conjecture. But one is shut 
up on shipboard like Montaigne in his tower, with 
nothing to do but to review his own thoughts and 
contradict himself. Dire, redire, et me contredire, 
will be the staple of my journal till I see land. I say 
nothing of such matters as the montagna bnma on 
which Ulysses wrecked; but since the sixteenth cen- 
tury could any man reasonably hope to stumble on 
one of those wonders which were cheap as dirt in the 
days of St. Saga ? Faustus, Don Juan, and Tann- 
haiiser are the last ghosts of legend, that lingered 
almost till the Gallic cock-crow of universal enlighten- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 265 

ment and disillusion. The Public School has done 
for Imagination. What shall I see in Outre-Mer 
or on the way thither, but what can be seen with 
eyes? To be sure, I stick by the sea-serpent, and 
would fain believe that science has scotched, not 
killed him. Nor is he to be lightly given up, for, 
like the old Scandinavian snake, he binds together 
for us the two hemispheres of Past and Present, 
of Belief and Science. He is the link which knits 
us seaboard Yankees with our Norse progenitors, in- 
terpreting between the age of the dragon and that 
of the railroad-train. We have made ducks and 
drakes of that large estate of wonder and delight 
bequeathed to us by ancestral vikings. . . . 

The fault of modern travelers is, that they see 
nothing out of sight. They talk of eocene periods 
and tertiary formations, and tell us how the world 
looked to the plesiosaur. They take science (or 
nescience) with them, instead of that soul of generous 
trust their elders had. All their senses are skeptics 
and doubters, materialists reporting things for other 
skeptics to doubt still further upon. Nature becomes 
a reluctant witness upon the stand, badgered with 
geologist hammers and phials of acid. There have 
been no travelers since those included in Hakluyt 
and Purchas, except Martin, perhaps, who saw an 
inch or two into the invisible at the Orkneys. We 
have peripatetic lecturers, but no more travelers. 
Travelers' stories are no longer proverbial. We have 



266 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

picked nearly every apple (wormy or otherwise) 
from the world^s tree of knowledge, and that without 
an Eve to tempt us. Two or three have hitherto 
hung luckily beyond reach on a lofty bough shadow- 
ing the interior of Africa, but there is a German Doc- 
tor at this very moment pelting at them with sticks 
and stones. It may be only next week, and these too, 
bitten by geographers and geologists, will be thrown 
away. 

Analysis is carried into everything. Even Deity 
is subjected to chemic tests. We must have exact 
knowledge, a cabinet stuck full of facts pressed, dried, 
or preserved in spirits, instead of the large, vague 
world our fathers had. With them, science was 
poetry; with us, poetry is science. Our modern 
Eden is a hortus siccus. Tourists defraud rather 
than enrich us. They have not that sense of esthetic 
proportion which characterized the elder traveler. 
. . . The journals of the elder navigators are prose 
Odysseys. The geographies of our ancestors were 
works of fancy and imagination. They read poems 
where we yawn over items. Their world was a huge 
wonder-horn, exhaustless as that which Thor strove 
to drain. Ours would scarce quench the small 
thirst of a bee. No modern voyager brings back the 
magical foundation stones of a Tempest. No Marco 
Polo, traversing the desert beyond the city of Lok, 
would tell of things able to inspire the mind of Milton 
with 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 267 

*Xalling shapes and beckoning shadows dire, 
And airy tongues that syllable men's names 
On sands and shores and desert wildernesses." 

It was easy enough to believe the story of Dante, 
when two-thirds of even the upper- world were yet un- 
traversed and unmapped. With every step of the 
recent traveler our inheritance of the wonderful is 
diminished. Those beautifully pictured notes of the 
Possible are redeemed at a ruinous discount in the 
hard and cumbrous coin of the Actual. How are we 
not defrauded and impoverished? Does CaUfornia 
vie with El Dorado ? or are Bruce^s Abyssinian kings 
a set-off for Prester John ? A bird in the bush is 
worth two in the hand. And if the philosophers have 
not even yet been able to agree whether the world 
has any existence independent of ourselves, how do 
we not gain a loss in every addition to the catalogue 
of Vulgar Errors ? Where are the fishes w^hich nidi- 
ficated in trees ? Where the m.onopodes sheltering 
themselves from the sun beneath their single um- 
brella-hke foot, — umbrella-like in everything but 
the fatal necessity of being borrowed ? Where the 
Acephali, with whom Herodotus, in a kind of ecstasy, 
wound up his climax of men with abnormal top- 
pieces? Where the Roc whose eggs are possibly 
boulders, needing no far-fetched theory of glacier or 
iceberg to account for them ? Where the tails of the 
men of Kent ? Where the no legs of the bird of para- 
dise ? Where the Unicorn, with that single horn of 



268 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

his, sovereign against all manner of poisons ? Where 
the Fountain of Youth? Where the Thessalian 
spring, which, without cost to the country, convicted 
and punished perjurers? Where the Amazons of 
Orellana ? All these, and a thousand other varieties, 
we have lost, and have got nothing instead of them. 
And those who have robbed us of them have stolen 
that which not enriches themselves. It is so 
much wealth cast into the sea beyond all approach 
of diving-bells. We owe no thanks to Mr. J. E. 
Worcester, whose Geography we studied enforcedly 
at school. Yet even he had his relentings, and in 
some softer moment vouchsafed us a fine inspiring 
print of the Maelstrom, answerable to the twenty- 
four mile diameter of its suction. Year by year, 
more and more of the world gets disenchanted. 
Even the icy privacy of the arctic and antarctic circles 
is invaded. Our youth are no longer ingenious, as 
indeed no ingenuity is demanded of them. Every- 
thing is accounted for, everything cut and dried, and 
the world may be put together as easily as the frag- 
ments of a dissected m^ap. The Mysterious bounds 
nothing now on the North, South, East, or West. 
We have played Jack Horner with our earth, till 
there is never a plum left in it. 



I 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 

1824-1892 



A WRITER of grace and force, a polished and effective ora- 
tor, an editor with both skill and high principle, and a publicist 
of wide influence, Mr. Curtis achieved a singularly successful 
career. In young manhood he entered and soon left mercan- 
tile life, came under the Transcendental influence at Brook 
Farm and Concord, and then made an extended European 
tour. His early impressions of travel were published in his 
''Nile Notes" (1851), ''Howadji in Syria" and ''Lotus- 
Eating" (1852). "The Potiphar Papers" (1853) were grace- 
fully ironic criticisms of society. "Prue and I" (1856) under 
guise of an autobiographical narrative was a series of delightful 
essays and reflections in and about New York — one chapter 
of which, "My Chateaux," has been selected for this volume. 
These and other books were his lighter labors. Mr. Curtis did 
fine work on the New York Tribune , in 1852, and as editor of 
the "Easy Chair" of Harper^s Magazine (from 1854), while, 
as editor of Harper's Weekly (from 1863), he became a posi- 
tive force in municipal and national affairs, especially after 
the seventies, in advocacy of Civil Service Reform, a cause 
which engaged his interest and his powers to the end. He 
was the president of the Civil Service Reform Leagues of New 
York State and of the nation. Throughout the exciting periods 
of anti-slavery labors, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, he 
was a cogent factor in the highest national interests, with voice 
and pen, gladly listened to and read with respect, while his 
personality bore the winning charm of the thorough gentleman. 



270 



MY CHATEAUX 

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan 
A stately pleasure-dome decree.'^ 

— Coleridge. 

I AM the owner of great estates. Many of them he 
in the West; but the greater part are in Spain. You 
may see my western possessions any evening at sun- 
set, when their spires and battlements flash against 
the horizon. 

It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, 
as a proprietor, that they are visible, to my eyes at 
least, from any part of the world in which I chance 
to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good 
Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I 
was a boy and a supercargo), if I fell homesick, or 
sank into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I had left 
behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and then, look- 
ing toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles 
and towers brightly burnished as if to salute and 
welcome me. 

So in the city, if I get vexed and wearied, and can- 
not find my wonted solace in sallying forth at dinner- 
time to contemplate the gay world of youth and 
beauty hurrying to the congress of fashion, — or 

271 



272 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

if I observe that years are deepening their tracks 
around the eyes of my wife, Prue, I go quietly up to the 
housetop, toward evening, and refresh myself with 
a distant prospect of my estates. It is as dear to 
me as that of Eton to the poet Gray; and, if I some- 
times wonder at such moments whether I shall find 
those realms as fair as they appear, I am suddenly 
reminded that the night air may be noxious, and 
descending, I enter the little parlor where Prue sits 
stitching, and surprise that precious woman by ex- 
claiming with the poet's pensive enthusiasm: — 

** Thought would destroy their Paradise. 
No more ; — where ignorance is bliss, 
'Tis folly to be wise." 

Columbus, also, had possessions in the West; 
and as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, 
my voice quivers when I come to the point in which 
it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with 
the sea-air, as the admiral's fleet approached the 
shores; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered 
around the sliips, glittering in the sun, gorgeous prom- 
ises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps with 
blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the 
strange wood from which the craft were hollowed. 
Then I cannot restrain myself. I think of the gor- 
geous visions I have seen before I have even under- 
taken the journey to the West, and I cry aloud to 
Prue: — 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 273 

"What sun-bright birds and gorgeous blossoms 
and celestial odors will float out to us, my Prue, as 
we approach our western possessions!" 
i The placid Prue raises her eyes to mine with a 
reproof so delicate that it could not be trusted to 
words; and after a moment she resumes her knitting, 
and I proceed. 

These are my western estates, but my finest castles 
are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, 
and my castles are all of perfect proportions and 
appropriately set in the most picturesque situations. 
I have never been to Spain myself, but I have nat- 
urally conversed much with travelers to that coun- 
try; although, I must allow, without deriving from 
them much substantial information about my 
property there. The wisest of them told me that 
there were more holders of real estate in Spain than 
in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are 
all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses 
a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversa- 
tion with them you easily gather that each one con- 
siders his own castles much the largest and in the 
loveliest positions. And, after I had heard this said, 
I verified it by discovering that all my immediate 
neighbors in the city were great Spanish proprietors. 

One day as I raised my head from entering some 
long and tedious accounts in my books, and began 
to reflect that the quarter was expiring, and that I 
must begin to prepare the balance-sheet, I observed 



274 ^^ST AMERICAiN ESSAYS 

my subordinate, in office but not in years (for poor 
old Titbottom will never see sixty again!), leaning on 
his hand, and much abstracted. 

"Are you not well, Titbottom?" asked I. 

*^ Perfectly, but I was just building a castle in 
Spain,'' said he. 

I looked at his rusty coat, his faded hands, his sad 
eye, and white hair, for a moment, in great surprise, 
and then inquired : — 

'^Is it possible that you ov/n property there too ?" 

He shook his head silently; and still leaning on his 
hand, and with an expression in his eye as if he were 
looking upon the most fertile estate of Andalusia, 
he went on making his plans; laying out his gardens, 
I suppose, building terraces for the vines, determining 
a library with a southern exposure, and resolving 
which should be the tapestried chamber. 

'^ What a singular whim," thought I, as I watched 
Titbottom and filled up a cheque for four hundred 
dollars, my quarterly salary, ^^that a man who owns 
castles in Spain should be deputy bookkeeper at 
nine hundred dollars a year!" 

When I went home I ate my dinner silently, and 
afterward sat for a long time upon the roof of the 
house, looking at my western property, and thinking 
of Titbottom. 

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors 
have ever been to Spain to take possession and 
report to the rest of us the state of our property 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 275 

there. I, of course, cannot go, I am too much 
engaged. So is Titbottom. And I find it is the case 
with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain 
us at home that we cannot get away. But it is 
always so with rich men. Prue sighed once as she 
sat at the window and saw Bourne, the millionaire, 
the president of innumerable companies, and man- 
ager and director of all the charitable societies in 
town, going by with wrinkled brow and hurried step. 
I asked her why she sighed. 

^' Because I was remembering that my mother used 
to tell me not to desire great riches, for they occa- 
sioned great cares,'' said she. 

'^They do indeed," answered I, with emphasis, 
remembering Titbottom, and the impossibility of 
looking after my Spanish estates. 

Prue turned and looked at me with mild surprise; 
but I saw that her mind had gone down the street 
with Bourne. I could never discover if he held much 
Spanish stock. But I think he does. All the Span- 
ish proprietors have a certain expression. Bourne 
has it to a remarkable degree. It is a kind of look, 
as if, in fact, a man's mind were in Spain. Bourne 
was an old lover of Prue's, and he is not married, 
which is strange for a man in his position. 

It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, 
as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The 
sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty 
and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little 



276 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

hazy and dreamy, perhaps, hke the Indian summer, 
but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. 
All the sublime mountains, and beautiful valleys, 
and soft landscape, that I have not yet seen, are to be 
found in the grounds. They command a noble view 
of the Alps; so fine, indeed, that I should be quite 
content with the prospect of them from the highest 
tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland. 

The neighboring ruins, too, are as picturesque as 
those of Italy, and my desire of standing in the Coli- 
seum, and of seeing the shattered arches of the 
Aqueducts stretching along the Campagna and melt- 
ing into the Alban Mount, is entirely quenched. 
The rich gloom of my orange groves is gilded by fruit 
as brilliant of complexion and exquisite of flavor as 
any that ever dark-eyed Sorrento girls, looking over 
the high plastered walls of southern Italy, hand to 
the youthful travelers, climbing on donkeys up the 
narrow lane beneath. 

The Nile flows through my grounds. The desert 
lies upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my 
garden. I am given to understand, also, that the 
Parthenon has been removed to my Spanish pos- 
sessions. The Golden-Horn is my fish-preserve; 
my flocks of golden fleece are pastured on the plain 
of Marathon, and the honey of Hymettus is distilled 
from the flowers that grow in the vale of Enna — 
all in my Spanish domains. 

From the windows of those castles look the beauti- 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 277 

ful women whom I have never seen, whose portraits 
the poets have painted. They wait for me there, 
and chiefly the fair-haired child, lost to my eyes so 
long ago, now bloomed into an impossible beauty. 
The lights that never shone, glance at evening in the 
vaulted halls, upon banquets that were never spread. 
The bands I have never collected, play all night 
long, and enchant the brilliant company, that was 
never assembled, into silence. 

In the long summer mornings the children that 
I never had, play in the gardens that I never planted. 
I hear their sweet voices sounding low and far away, 
calling, ^^ Father! father!" I see the lost fair-haired 
girl, grown now into a woman, descending the stately 
stairs of my castle in Spain, stepping out upon the 
lawn, and playing with those children. They bound 
away together down the garden; but those voices 
linger, this time airily calling, ^^ Mother! mother!'' 

But there is a stranger magic than this in my 
Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when 
a child, I played, in my father's old country place, 
which was sold w^hen he failed, are all there, and not a 
flower faded, nor a blade of grass sere. The green 
leaves have not fallen from the spring woods of half 
a century ago, and a gorgeous autumn has blazed 
undimmed for fifty years among the trees I remem- 
ber. ... 

Yes, and in those castles in Spain, Prue is not 
the placid, breeches-patching helpmate, with whom 



278 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

you are acquainted, but her face has a bloom which 
we both remember, and her movement a grace which 
my Spanish swans emulate, and her voice a music 
sweeter than those that orchestras discourse. She 
is always there what she seemed to me when I fell 
in love with her, many and many years ago. . . . 

So, when I meditate my Spanish castles, I see Prue 
in them as my heart saw her standing by her father's 
door. '^Age cannot wither her.'' There is a magic 
in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides 
by, unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the 
Alps, which I see so distinctly from my Spanish 
windows; I delight in the taste of the southern fruit 
that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the pensive 
shade of the Italian ruins in my gardens; I like to 
shoot crocodiles, and talk with the Sphinx upon the 
shores of the Nile, flowing through my domain; I am 
glad to drink sherbet in Damascus, and fleece my 
flocks on the plains of Marathon; but I would resign 
all these forever rather than part with that Spanish 
portrait of Prue for a day. Nay, have I not resigned 
them all forever, to live with that portrait's changing 
original ? 

I have often wondered how I should reach my 
castles. The desire of going comes over me very 
strongly sometimes, and I endeavor to see how I can 
arrange my affairs, so as to get away. To tell the 
truth, I am not quite sure of the route, — I mean, 
to that particular part of Spain in which my estates 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 279 

lie. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody 
seems to know precisely. . . . 

It occurred to me that Bourne, the milUonaire, 
must have ascertained the safest and most expedi- 
tious route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one 
afternoon and went into his office. He was sitting 
at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files 
of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes, everything 
that covers the tables of a great merchant. In the 
outer rooms clerks were writing. Upon high shelves 
over their heads, were huge chests, covered with dust, 
dingy with age, many of them, and all marked with 
the name of the firm, in large black letters — 
'^ Bourne & Dye.'^ They were all numbered also with 
the proper year; some of them with a single capital 
B, and dates extending back into the last century, 
when old Bourne made the great fortune, before he 
went into partnership with Dye. Everything was 
indicative of immense and increasing prosperity. 

There were several gentlemen in waiting to con- 
verse with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly, 
down town), and I waited until they went out. But 
others came in. There was no pause in the rush. 
All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At 
length I stepped up. 

"A moment, please, Mr. Bourne,'' 

He looked up hastily, wished me good morning, 
which he had done to none of the others, and which 
courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy. 



28o BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

'^What is it, sir?'' he asked blandly, but with 
wrinkled brow. 

''Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?" 
said I, without preface. 

He looked at me for a few moments without speak- 
ing, and without seeming to see me. His brow 
gradually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently look- 
ing into the street, were really, I have no doubt, 
feasting upon the Spanish landscape. 

''Too many, too many,'' said he at length, mus- 
ingly, shaking his head, and without addressing me. 

I suppose he felt himself too much extended — 
as we say in Wall Street. He feared, I thought, 
that he had too much impracticable property, else- 
where, to own so much in Spain, so I asked: — 

"Will you tell me what you consider the shortest 
and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne ? for, of course, 
a man who drives such an immense trade with all 
parts of the world, will know all that I have come to 
inquire." 

"My dear sir," answered he, wearily, "I have 
been tr3dng all my Ufe to discover it; but none of 
my ships have ever been there — none of my cap- 
tains have any report to make. They bring me, as 
they brought my father, gold dust from Guinea; 
ivory, pearls, and precious stones, from every part 
of the earth ; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, 
from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks, 
agents, and travelers of all kinds, philosophers. 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 281 

pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, 
to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or 
heard of my castles, except one young poet, and he 
died in a mad-house/' 

" Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety- 
seven?'' hastily demanded a man, whom, as he 
entered, I recognized as a broker. ^^ We'll make a 
splendid thing of it." 

Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disap- 
peared. 

^^ Happy man!" muttered the merchant, as the 
broker went out; ^^he has no castles in Spain." 

"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," 
said I, retiring. 

^'I am glad you came," returned he; "but I assure 
you, had I known the route you hoped to ascertain 
from me, I should have sailed years and years ago. 
People sail for the North-west Passage, which is 
nothing when you have found it. Why don't the 
English Admiralty fit out expeditions to discover 
all our castles in Spain?" 

He sat lost in thought. 

"It's nearly post-time, sir," said the clerk. 

Mr. Bourne did not heed him. He was still mus- 
ing; and I turned to go, wishing him good morhing. 
When I had nearly reached the door, he called me 
back, saying, as if continuing his remarks: — 

"It is strange that you, of all men, should come 
to ask me this question. If I envy any man, it is 



282 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

you, for I sincerely assure you that I supposed you 
lived altogether upon your Spanish estates. I once 
thought I knew the way to mine. I gave directions 
for furnishing them, and ordered bridal bouquets, 
which were never used, but I suppose they are there 
still." 

He paused a moment, then said slowly — "How 
is your wife?" 

I told him that Prue was well — that she was 
always remarkably well. Mr. Bourne shook me 
warmly by the hand. 

"Thank you," said he. "Good morning." 

I knew why he thanked me; I knew why he 
thought that I lived altogether upon my Spanish 
estates; I knew a little bit about those bridal bou- 
quets. Mr. Bourne, the millionaire, was an old 
lover of Prue's. There is something very odd about 
these Spanish castles. When I think of them, I 
somehow see the fair-haired girl whom I knew when 
I was not out of short jackets. When Bourne medi- 
tates them, he sees Prue and me quietly at home in 
their best chambers. It is very singular thing that 
my wife should live in another man's castle in Spain. 

At length I resolved to ask Titbottom if he had 
ever'heard of the best route to our estates. He said 
that he owned castles, and sometimes there was an 
expression in his face, as if he saw them. I hope he 
did. I should long ago have asked him if he had ever 
observed the turrets of my possessions in the West, 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 283 

without alluding to Spain, if I had not feared he 
would suppose I was mocking his poverty. I hope 
his poverty has not turned his head, for he is very 
forlorn. 

One Sunday I went with him a few miles into the 
country. It was a soft, bright day, the fields and 
hills lay turned to the sky, as if every leaf and blade 
of grass were nerves, bared to the touch of the sun. 
I almost felt the ground warm under my feet. The 
meadows waved and glittered, the lights and shadows 
were exquisite, and the distant hills seemed only to 
remove the horizon farther away. As we strolled 
along, picking wild flowers, for it was in summer, 
I was thinking what a fine day it was for a trip to 
Spain, when Titbottom suddenly exclaimed: — 

'^Thank God! I own this landscape." 

''You?" returned I. 

''Certainly," said he. 

"Why," I answered, "I thought this was part of 
Bourne^s property." 

Titbottom smiled. 

"Does Bourne own the sun and sky? Does 
Bourne own that sailing shadow yonder? Does 
Bourne own the golden luster of the grain, or the 
motion of the wood, or those ghosts of hills that 
glide pallid along the horizon ? Bourne owns the 
dirt and fences; I own the beauty that makes the 
landscape, or otherwise how could I own castles in 
Spain?" 



284 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

That was very true. I respected Titbottom more 
than ever. ... ^ 

When I reached home, my darhng Prue was sitting 
in the small parlor, reading. I felt a little guilty 
for having been so long away, and upon my only holi- 
day, too. . . . 

So we went in to tea. We eat in the back parlor, 
for our little house and limited means do not allow 
us to have things upon the Spanish scale. It is better 
than a sermon to hear my wife Prue talk to the 
children; and when she speaks to me it seems 
sweeter than psalm singing; at least, such as we 
have in our church. I am very happy. . . . 

As the years go by, I am not conscious that my 
interest diminishes. If I see that age is subtly sifting 
his snow in the dark hair of my Prue, I smile, con- 
tented, for her hair, dark and heavy as when I first 
saw it, is all carefully treasured in my castles in Spain. 
If I feel her arm more heavily leaning upon mine, 
as we walk around the squares, I press it closely to 
my side, for I know that the easy grace of her youth's 
motion will be restored by the elixir of that Spanish 
air. If her voice sometimes falls less clearly from 
her Ups, it is no less sweet to me, for the music of her 
voice's prime fills, freshly as ever, those Spanish halls. 
If the light I love fades a little from her eyes, I know 
that the glances she gave me, in our youth, are the 
eternal sunshine of my castles in Spain. 

I defy time and change. Each year laid upon our 



GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS 285 

heads is a hand of blessing. I have no doubt that I 
shall find the shortest route to my possessions as 
soon as need be. Perhaps, when Adoniram is mar- 
ried, we shall all go out to one of my castles to pass 
the honeymoon. ... I have considered already 
what society I should ask to meet the bride. Jeph- 
thah's daughter and the Chevalier Bayard, I should 
say — and fair Rosamond with Dean Swift — King 
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba would come over, 
I think, from his famous castle — Shakespeare and 
his friend the Marquis of Southampton might come 
in a galley with Cleopatra; and, if any guest were 
offended by her presence, he should devote himself to 
the Fair One with Golden Locks. Mephistopheles 
is not personally disagreeable, and is exceedingly 
well-bred in society, I am told; and he should come 
tUe-d-tete with Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. Spenser 
should escort his Faerie Queene, who would preside 
at the tea-table. 

Mr. Samuel Weller I should ask as Lord of Misrule, 
and Dr. Johnson as the Abbot of Unreason. I would 
suggest to Major Dobbin to accompany Mrs. Fry; 
Alcibiades would bring Homer and Plato in his 
purple-sailed galley; and I would have Aspasia, 
Ninon de I'Enclos, and Mrs. Battle, to make up a 
table of whist with Queen EHzabeth. I shall order a 
seat placed in the oratory for Lady Jane Grey and 
Joan of Arc. I shall invite General Washington to 
bring some of the choicest cigars from his plantation 



286 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

for Sir Walter Raleigh; and Chaucer, Browning, and 
Walter Savage Landor should talk with Goethe, who is 
to bring Tasso on one arm and Iphigenia on the other. 

Dante and Mr. Carlyle would prefer, I suppose, 
to go down into the dark vaults under the castle. 
The Man in the Moon, the Old Harry, and William 
of the Wisp would be valuable additions, and the 
Laureate Tennyson might compose an ofi&cial ode 
upon the occasion; or I would ask ^^They'' to say 
all about it. 

Of course there are many other guests whose 
names I do not at the moment recall. . . . 

And yet, if Adoniram should never marry ? — or 
if we could not get to Spain ? — or if the company 
would not come ? 

What then? Shall I betray a secret? I have 
already entertained this party in my humble little 
parlor at home; and Prue presided as serenely as 
Scmiramis over her court. Have I not said that I 
defy time, and shall space hope to daunt me ? I keep 
books by day, but by night books keep me. They 
leave me to dreams and reveries. Shall I confess 
that sometimes when I have been sitting, reading to 
my Prue, Cymbeline, perhaps, or a Canterbury tale, 
I have seemed to see clearly before me the broad 
highway to my castles in Spain; and as she looked 
up from her work, and smiled in sympathy, I have 
even fancied that I was already there ? 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 

1822-1908 



*'Ik Marvel," as the author called himself in one of his 
early books, pursued an unusually long career, being known 
as an active writer from 1857 to 1897. And he was always a 
favorite, his grace and ease and refined purity of style com- 
mending to a wide circle of readers his fancies and his facts, 
travel-gleanings and history, farming, fiction, legendary lore, 
and literary criticisms. He is credited with a score or more of 
books. Probably the most famous of these are ''Reveries of a 
Bachelor" (1850) and "Dream Life" (i85i),from the former 
of which is presented an example of his delicate and airily 
humorous imaginings. This book attained a very large circu- 
lation when first issued, and is still widely read, especially by 
young men and women, to whom its sentiment naturally ap- 
peals, while older hearts may well find refreshment in memo- 
ries evoked. It was republished in England and translated 
into French. 

Perhaps "My Farm of Edgewood" (1863), "Doctor Johns'' 
(1866), a novel, "About Old Story-tellers" (1878), "English 
Lands, Letters, and Kings" (1889), and "American Lands and 
Letters" (1897), ^.re the best of his work, but the "Reveries" 
and "Dream Life" will be longest remembered and read. 



288 



BESIDE A CITY GRATE 

I AM in a garret of the city. From my window 
I look over a mass of crowded house-tops — moraUz- 
ing often upon the scene, but in a strain too long and 
somber to be set down here. In place of the wide 
country chimney, with its iron fire-dogs, is a snug 
grate, where the maid makes me a fire in the morning, 
and rekindles it in the afternoon. 

I am usually fairly seated in my chair — a cosily 
stuffed ofi&ce chair — by five or six o'clock of the 
evening. The fire has been newly made, perhaps an 
hour before: first, the maid drops a withe of paper in 
the bottom of the grate, then a stick or two of pine- 
wood, and after it a hod of Liverpool coal; so that by 
the time I am seated for the evening, the sea-coal is 
fairly in a blaze. 

When this has sunk to a level with the second bar 
of the grate, the maid replenishes it with a hod of 
anthracite; and I sit musing and reading, while the 
new coal warms and kindles — not leaving my place, 
until it has sunk to the third bar of the grate, which 
marks my bed-time. . . . 

289 



290 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



ANTHRACITE 



It does not burn freely, so I put on the blower. 
Quaint and good-natured Xavier de Maistre ^ would 
have made, I dare say, a pretty epilogue about a 
sheet-iron blower; but I cannot. 

I try to bring back the image that belonged to the 
Ungering bituminous flame, but with my eyes on that 
dark blower, — how can I ? 

It is the black curtain of destiny which drops down 
before our brightest dreams. How often the phan- 
toms of joy regale us, and dance before us — golden- 
winged, angel-faced, heart- warming, and make an 
Elysium in which the dreaming soul bathes, and feels 
translated to another existence; and then — sudden 
as night, or a cloud — a word, a step, a thought, a 
memory will chase them away, like scared deer van- 
ishing over a gray horizon of moor-land! 

I know not justly, if it be a weakness or a sin to 
create these phantoms that we love, and to group 
them into a paradise — soul-created. But if it is a 
sin, it is a sweet and enchanting sin; and if it is a 
weakness, it is a strong and stirring weakness. If 
this heart is sick of the falsities that meet it at every 
hand, and is eager to spend that power which nature 
has ribbed it with, on some object worthy of its full- 
ness and depth, — shall it not feel a rich relief, — 
nay more, an exercise in keeping with its end, if it 
flow out — strong as a tempest, wild as a rushing 

^ Voyage autour de Ma Chambre. 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 29I 

river, upon those ideal creations, which imagination 
invents, and which are tempered by our best sense of 
beauty, purity, and grace ? 

— Useless, do you say ? Aye, it is as useless as the 
pleasure of looking, hour upon hour, over bright land- 
scapes; it is as useless as the rapt enjoyment of listen- 
ing, with heart full and eyes brimming, to such music 
as the Miserere at Rome; it is as useless as the ec- 
stasy of kindling your soul into fervor and love and 
madness, over pages that reek with genius. . . . 

But my fire is in a glow, a pleasant glow, throwing 
a tranquil, steady light to the farthest corner of my 
garret. How unlike it is to the flashing play of the 
sea-coal ! — unlike as an unsteady, uncertain- work- 
ing heart to the true and earnest constancy of one 
cheerful and right. . . . 

But let me distinguish this heart from your clay- 
cold, luke-warm, half-hearted soul ; — considerate, 
because ignorant; judicious, because possessed of no 
latent fires that need a curb; prudish, because with 
no warm blood to tempt. This sort of soul may pass 
scatheless through the fiery furnace of life; strong, 
only in its weakness; pure, because of its failings; 
and good, only by negation. It may triumph over 
love, and sin, and death ; but it will be a triumph of 
the beast, which has neither passions to subdue, or 
energy to attack, or hope to quench. 

Let us come back to the steady and earnest heart, 
glowing like my anthracite coal. 



292 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

I fancy I see such a one now: - — the eye is deep 
and reaches back to the spirit. . . . 

It is full of deep, tender, and earnest feeling. It is 
an eye, which looked on once, you long to look on 
again; it is an eye which will haunt your dreams, — 
an eye which will give a color, in spite of you, to all 
your reveries. It is an eye which lies before you in 
your future, like a star in the mariner's heaven ; by it, 
unconsciously, and from force of deep soul-habit, you 
take all your observations. It is meek and quiet; 
but it is full, as a spring that gushes in flood; an 
Aphrodite and a Mercury — a Vaucluse and a 
CUtumnus! 

The face is an angel face; no matter for curious 
lines of beauty; no matter for popular talk of pretti- 
ness; no matter for its angles or its proportions; no 
matter for its color or its form — the soul is there, 
illuminating every feature, burnishing every point, 
hallowing every surface. It tells of honesty, sincer- 
ity, and worth; it tells of truth and virtue; — and 
you clasp the image to your heart, as the received 
ideal of your fondest dreams. 

The figure may be this or that, may be tall or short, 
it matters nothing, — the heart is there. The 
talk may be soft or low, serious or piquant — a free 
and honest soul is warming and softening it all. As 
you speak, it speaks back again; as you think, it 
thinks again — (not in conjunction, but in the same 
sign of the Zodiac) ; as you love, it loves in return. 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 293 

— It is the heart for a sister, and happy is the man 
who can claim such! The warmth that hes in it is 
not only generous, but religious, genial, devotional, 
tender, self-sacrificing, and looking heavenward. 

A man without some sort of religion is at best a 
poor reprobate, the foot-ball of destiny, with no tie 
linking him to infinity, and the wondrous eternity 
that is begun with him; but a woman without it is 
even worse — a flame without heat, a rainbow with- 
out color, a flower without perfume! 

A man may in some sort tie his frail hopes and 
honors, with weak, shifting ground-tackle, to busi- 
ness, or to the world; but a woman without that 
anchor which they call Faith, is adrift, and a-wreck! 
A man may clumsily contrive a kind of moral re- 
sponsibility, out of his relations to mankind; but a 
woman in her comparatively isolated sphere, where 
affection and not purpose is the controlling motive, 
can find no basis for any system of right action but 
that of spiritual faith. A man may craze his thought, 
and his brain, to trustfulness in such poor harborage 
as Fame and Reputation may stretch before him; 
but a woman — where can she put her hope in storms, 
if not in Heaven ? 

And that sweet trustfulness — that abiding love — 
that enduring hope, mellowing every page and scene 
of life, lighting them with pleasantest radiance, when 
the world-storms break like an army with smoking 
cannon — what can bestow it all, but a holy soul-tie 



294 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



I 



to what is above the storms, and to what is stronger 
than an army with cannon ? Who that has enjoyed 
the counsel and the love of a Christian mother, but 
will echo the thought with energy, and hallow it with 
a tear ? et moi, je pleurs! 

My fire is now a mass of red-hot coal. The w^hole 
atmosphere of my room is warm. The heart that 
with its glow can light up and warm a garret with 
loose casements and shattered roof, is capable of the 
best love — domestic love. I draw farther off, and 
the images upon the screen change. The warmth, 
the hour, the quiet, create a home feeling; and that 
feeling, quick as lightning, has stolen from the world 
of fancy (a Promethean theft,) a home object, about 
which my musings go on to drape themselves in 
luxurious reverie. 

— There she sits, by the corner of the fire, in a 
neat home dress, of sober, yet most adorning color. 
A little bit of lace ruffie is gathered about the neck, 
by a blue ribbon; and the ends of the ribbon are 
crossed under the dimpling chin, and are fastened 
neatly by a simple, unpretending brooch — your gift. 
The arm, a pretty, taper arm, lies over the carved 
elbow of the oaken chair; the hand, white and deli- 
cate, sustains a little home volume that hangs from 
her fingers. The forefinger is between the leaves, 
and the others lie in relief upon the dark embossed 
cover. She repeats in a silver voice, a line that has 
attracted her fancy; and you listen — or at any rate, 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 295 

you seem to listen — with the eyes now on the Hps, 
now on the forehead, and now on the finger, where 
gUtters Hke a star, the marriage ring — little gold 
band, at which she does not chafe, that tells you, — 
she is yours! ... 

It is a strange force of the mind and of the fancy, 
that can set the objects which are closest to the heart 
far down the lapse of time. Even now, as the fire 
fades slightly, and sinks slowly towards the bar, 
which is the dial of my hours, I seem to see that image 
of love which has played about the fire-glow of my 
grate — years hence. It still covers the same warm, 
trustful, religious heart. Trials have tried it; afilic- 
tions have weighed upon it; danger has scared it; 
and death is coming near to subdue it; but still it 
is the same. 

The fingers are thinner; the face has lines of care 
and sorrow, crossing each other in a web-work, that 
makes the golden tissue of humanity. But the heart 
is fond, and steady; it is the same dear heart, the 
same self-sacrificing heart, warming, like a fire, all 
around it. Affliction has tempered joy; and joy 
adorned affliction. Life and all its troubles have 
become distilled into an holy incense, rising ever from 
your fireside, — an offering to your household gods. 

Your dreams of reputation, your swift determina- 
tion, your impulsive pride, your deep uttered vows to 
win a name, have all sobered into affection — have 
all blended into that glow of feeling, which finds its 



296 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



4 



center, and hope, and joy in Home. From my soul I 
pity him whose soul does not leap at the mere utter- 
ance of that name. 

A home ! — it is the bright, blessed, adorable phan- 
tom which sits highest on the sunny horizon that 
girdeth Life! When shall it be reached? . . . 

The town clock is striking midnight. The cold 
of the night-wind is urging its way in at the door 
and window-crevice; the fire sunk almost to the 
third bar of the grate. Still my dream tires not, 
but wraps fondly round that image, — ■ now in the far- 
off, chilling mists of age, growing sainted. Love has 
blended into reverence; passion has subsided into 
joyous content. 
^^ — And what if age comes, said I, in a new flush 
of excitation, — what else proves the wine ? What 
else gives inner strength, and knowledge, and a steady 
pilot-hand, to steer your boat out boldly upon 
that shoreless sea, where the river of life is running ? 
Let the white ashes gather; let the silver hair lie, 
where lay the auburn; let the eye gleam farther back, 
and dimmer; it is but retreating toward the pure sky- 
depths, an usher to the land where you will follow after. 

It is quite cold, and I take away the screen alto- 
gether; there is a httle glow yet, but presently the 
coal slips below the third bar, with a rumbling sound, 
— Uke that of coarse gravel falling into a new-dug 
grave. 

— She is gone! 



DONALD GRANT MITCHELL 297 

Well, the heart has burned fairly, evenly, gener- 
ously, while there was mortality to kindle it; eternity 
will surely kindle it better. 

— Tears indeed; but they are tears of thanks- 
giving, of resignation, and of hope! 

And the eyes, full of those tears, which ministering 
angels bestow, climb with quick vision, upon the 
angeUc ladder, and open upon the futurity where she 
has entered, and upon the country which she enjoys. 

It is midnight, and the sounds of life are dead. 

You are in the death chamber of life; but you are 
also in the death chamber of care. The world seems 
sliding backward; and hope and you are sHding 
forward. The clouds, the agonies, the vain expec- 
tancies, the braggart noise, the fears, now vanish 
behind the curtain of the Past, and of the Night. 
They roll from your soul Uke a load. 

In the dimness of what seems the ending Present, 
you reach out your prayerful hands toward that 
boundless Future, where God's eye lifts over the 
horizon, Uke sunrise on the ocean. Do you recog- 
nize it as an earnest of something better ? Aye, if 
the heart has been pure, and steady, — burning lilce 
my fire — it has learned it without seeming to learn. 
Faith has grown upon it, as the blossom grows upon 
the bud, or the flower upon the slow-lifting stalk. 

Cares cannot come into the dream-land where I 
live. They sink with the dying street noise, and 
vanish with the embers of my fire. . . . 



298 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

A little rumbling, and a last plunge of the cinders 
within my grate, startled me, and dragged back my 
fancy from my flower chase, beyond the Phlegethon, 
to the white ashes, that were now thick all over the 
darkened coals. 

— And this — mused I — is only a bachelor- 
dream about a pure, and loving heart! And to-mor- 
row comes cankerous Ufe again: — is it wished for? 
Or if not wished for, is the not wishing, wicked ? . . . 

— I threw myself upon my bed: and as my 
thoughts ran over the definite, sharp business of the 
morrow, my Reverie, and its glowing images, that 
made my heart bound, swept away, Uke those fleecy 
rain clouds of August, on which the sun paints rain- 
bows — driven Southward, by a cool, rising wind 
from the North. 

— I wonder, — thought I, as I dropped asleep, — 
if a married man with his sentiment made actual is, 
after all, as happy as we poor fellows, in our dreams ? 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 

I 829-1 900 



Essentially an essayist, — whatever special form his writ- 
ings took, — Warner won a place in the reading world akin 
to those of Irving and Curtis, and not unlike the quiet affec- 
tion with which Charles Lamb is regarded. Massachusetts 
born, he was graduated at Hamilton College, New York, and 
for some years followed land-surveying and then the law. But 
some Western letters of his to the Hartford (Conn.) Press led 
to his joining that paper (afterward The Courant) and, at 
first with General Hawley and later alone, he was for years 
its editor. 

His books (republished articles mainly) attracted much 
interest from their delicate humor, shrewd perception, and lazy, 
graceful style. "Being a Boy" (1867) was the first, ''My 
Summer in a Garden" (1870) the next, and that, with "Back- 
Log Studies" (1872) quite assured his place as a popular favo- 
rite. He issued a number of books of foreign travel, each one 
with its special charm, and in 1884 became associate editor of 
Harper^s Magazine and occupied the " Easy Chair." In this 
delightful and unconventional position he wrote many apt, 
interesting, inspiring, witty, and substantially useful things 
which, despite their playful style, were full of admirable thought 
and counsel. Two of these, on the general theme of "Christ- 
mas," are here presented. 

Warner's novels could not but be of interest, but they 
were not equal to his discursive essay-work. His lives of 
Irving and of Captain John Smith are fine; but his genial 
discussions of life, men, women, society, and the infinitude of 
everyday topics, will always be his best title to remembrance. 



300 



CHRISTMAS 

JUVENTUS MUNDI 

Sometimes the world seems very old. It ap- 
peared so to Bernard of Cluny in the twelfth century, 
when he wrote: 

" The world is very evil, 
The times are waxing late." 

There was a general impression among the Christians 
of the first century of our era that the end was near. 
The world must have seemed very ancient to the 
Egyptians fifteen hundred years before Christ, when 
the Pyramid of Cheops was a relic of antiquity, when 
almost the whole circle of arts, sciences, and litera- 
ture had been run through, when every nation within 
reach had been conquered, when woman had been 
developed into one of the most fascinating of beings, 
and even reigned more absolutely than Elizabeth or 
Victoria has reigned since: it was a pretty tired old 
world at that time. One might almost say that the 
further we go back the older and more ''played out'' 
the world appears, notwithstanding that the poets, 
who were generally pessimists of the present, kept 
harping about the youth of the world and the joyous 

301 



302 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



spontaneity of human life in some golden age before 
their time. In fact, the world is old in spots — in 
Memphis and Boston and Damascus and Salem and 
Ephesus. Some of these places are venerable in 
traditions, and some of them are actually worn out 
and taking a rest from too much civilization — lying 
fallow, as the saying is. But age is so entirely relative 
that to many persons the landing of the Mayflower 
seems more remote than the voyage of Jason, and a 
Mayflower chest a more antique piece of furniture 
than the timbers of the Ark, which some believe 
can still be seen on top of Mount Ararat. 

But, speaking generally, the world is still young 
and growing, and a considerable portion of it un- 
finished. The oldest part, indeed, the Laurentian 
Hills, which were first out of water, is still only 
sparsely settled; and no one pretends that Florida 
is anything like finished, or that the delta of the Mis- 
sissippi is in anything more than the process of forma- 
tion. Men are so young and lively in these days 
that they cannot wait for the slow processes of nature, 
but they fill up and bank up places, like Holland, 
where they can live ; and they keep on exploring and 
discovering incongruous regions, like Alaska, where 
they can go and exercise their juvenile exuberance. 

In many respects the world has been growing 
younger ever since the Christian era. A new spirit 
came into it then which makes youth perpetual, 
a spirit of living in others, which got the name of uni- 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 303 

versal brotherhood, a spirit that has had a good many 
discouragements and set-backs, but which, on the 
whole, gains ground, and generally works in harmony 
with the scientific spirit, breaking down the exclusive 
character of the conquests of nature. What used to 
be the mystery and occultism of the few is now gen- 
eral knowledge, so that all the playing at occultism 
by conceited people now seems jejune and foolish. 
A little machine called the instantaneous photograph 
takes pictures as quickly and accurately as the human 
eye does, and besides makes them permanent. In- 
stead of fooling credulous multitudes with responses 
from Delphi, we have a Congress which can enact 
tariff regulations susceptible of interpretations enough 
to satisfy the love of mystery of the entire nation. 
Instead of loafing round Memnon at sunrise to catch 
some supernatural tones, we talk words into a little 
contrivance which will repeat our words and tones to 
the remotest generation of those who shall be curious 
to know whether we said those words in jest or ear- 
nest. All these mysteries made common and diffused 
certainly increase the feeling of the equality of oppor- 
tunity in the world. And day by day such won- 
derful things are discovered and scattered abroad 
that we are warranted in believing that we are only 
on the threshold of turning to account the hidden 
forces of nature. There would be great danger of 
human presumption and conceit in this progress if 
the conceit were not so widely diffused, and where 



304 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

we are all conceited there is no one to whom it will 
appear unpleasant. If there was only one person 
who knew about the telephone he would be unbear- 
able. Probably the Eiffel Tower would be stricken 
down as a monumental presumption, Uke that of 
Babel, if it had not been raised with the full knowl- 
edge and consent of all the world. 

This new spirit, with its multiform manifestations, 
which came into the world nearly nineteen hundred 
years ago, is sometimes called the spirit of Christmas. 
And good reasons can be given for supposing that it 
is. At any rate, those nations that have the most of 
it are the most prosperous, and those people who have 
the most of it are the most agreeable to associate 
with. Know all men by these Presents, is an old 
legal form which has come to have a new meaning in 
this dispensation. It is by the spirit of brotherhood 
exhibited in giving presents that we know the Christ- 
mas proper, only we are apt to take it in too narrow 
a way. The real spirit of Christmas is the general 
diffusion of helpfulness and good-will. If somebody 
were to discover an elixir which would make every 
one truthful, he would not, in this age of the world, 
patent it. Indeed, the Patent Office would not let 
him make a corner on virtue as he does in wheat; 
and it is not respectable any more among the real 
children of Christmas to make a corner in wheat. 
The world, to be sure, tolerates still a great many 
things that it does not approve of, and, on the whole. 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 305 

Christmas, as an ameliorating and good-fellowship 
institution, gains a Uttle year by year. There is still 
one hitch about it, and a bad one just now, namely, 
that many people think they can buy its spirit by 
jerks of liberaUty, by costly gifts. Whereas the fact 
is that a great many of the costliest gifts in this 
season do not count at all. Crumbs from the rich 
man's table don't avail any more to open the pearly 
gates even of popular esteem in this world. Let us 
say, in fine, that a loving, sympathetic heart is better 
than a nickel-plated service in this world, which is 
surely growing young and sympathetic. 

GIVING AS A LUXURY 

There must be something very good in human 
nature, or people would not experience so much pleas- 
ure in giving ; there must be something very bad in 
human nature, or more people would try the experi- 
ment of giving. Those who do try it become en- 
amored of it, and get their chief pleasure in life out 
of it ; and so evident is this that there is some basis for 
the idea that it is ignorance rather than badness 
which keeps so many people from being generous. 
Of course it may become a sort of dissipation, or more 
than that, a devastation, as many men who have what 
are called ^^good wives" have reason to know, in the 
gradual disappearance of their wardrobe if they 
chance to lay aside any of it temporarily. The 



3o6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

amount that a good woman can give away is only 
measured by her opportunity. Her mind becomes 
so trained in the mystery of this pleasure that she 
experiences no thrill of deUght in giving away only 
the things her husband does not want. Her office 
in Hfe is to teach him the joy of self-sacrifice. . . . 
Let one consider seriously whether he ever gets as 
much satisfaction out of a gift received as out of one 
given. It pleases him for the moment, and if it is 
useful, for a long time; he turns it over, and ad- 
mires it; he may value it as a token of affection, and 
it flatters his self-esteem that he is the object of it. 
But it is a transient feeling compared with that he 
has when he has made a gift. That substantially 
ministers to his self-esteem. He follows the gift; 
he dwells upon the delight of the receiver; his imagi- 
nation plays about it; it will never wear out or be- 
come stale; having parted with it, it is for him a 
lasting possession. It is an investment as lasting 
as that in the debt of England. Like a good deed, it 
grows, and is continually satisfactory. It is some- 
thing to think of when he first wakes in the morning 
— a time when most people are badly put to it for 
want of something pleasant to think of. This fact 
about giving is so incontestably true that it is a 
wonder that enlightened people do not more freely 
indulge in giving for their own comfort. It is, above 
all else, amazing that so many imagine they are 
going to get any satisfaction out of what they lea\^e 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 307 

by will. They may be in a state where they will 
enjoy it, if the will is not fought over ; but it is shock- 
ing how Uttle gratitude there is accorded to a departed 
giver compared to a living giver. He couldn't take 
the property with him, it is said; he was obliged to 
leave it to somebody. By this thought his generosity 
is always reduced to a minimum. He may build a 
monument to himself in some institution, but we do 
not know enough of the world to which he has gone 
to know whether a tiny monument on this earth is any 
satisfaction to a person who is free of the universe. 
Whereas every giving or deed of real humanity 
done while he was living would have entered into his 
character, and would be of lasting service to him — 
that is, in any future which we can conceive. 

Of course we are not confining our remarks to what 
are called Christmas gifts — commercially so called 
— nor would we undertake to estimate the pleasure 
there is in either receiving or giving these. The 
shrewd manufacturers of the world have taken notice 
of the periodic generosity of the race, and ingeniously 
produce articles to serve it, that is, to anticipate the 
taste and to thwart all individuality or spontaneity 
in it. There is, in short, what is called a "line of 
holiday goods," fitting, it may be supposed, the 
periodic line of charity. When a person receives 
some of these things in the blessed season of such, 
he is apt to be puzzled. He wants to know what 
they are for, what he is to do with them. . . . But 



3o8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

consider how full the world is of holiday goods — 
costly goods too — that are of no earthly use, and 
are not even artistic, and how short life is, and how 
many people actually need books and other indis- 
pensable articles, and how starved are many fine 
drawing-rooms, not for hoUday goods, but for ob- 
jects of beauty. 

Christmas stands for much, and for more and more 
in a world that is breaking down its barriers of race 
and religious intolerance, and one of its chief offices 
has been supposed to be the teaching of men the 
pleasure there is in getting rid of some of their pos- 
sessions for the benefit of others. But this frittering 
away a good instinct and tendency in conventional 
giving of manufactures made to suit an artificial 
condition is hardly in the line of developing the spirit 
that shares the last crust or gives to the thirsty com- 
panion in the desert the first pull at the canteen. 

Of course Christmas feeling is the life of trade 
and all that, and we will be the last to discourage 
any sort of giving, for one can scarcely disencumber 
himself of anything in his passage through this world 
and not be benefited ; but the hint may not be thrown 
away that one will personally get more satisfaction 
out of his periodic or continual benevolence if he 
gives during his life the things which he wants and 
other people need, and reserves for a fine show in his 
will a collected but not selected mass of holiday 
goods. 



HENRY TIMROD 

1829-1867 



TiMROD was both actually and typically a Southern poet. 
His birth in Charleston, South Carolina, and his life, misfor- 
tunes under the war cloud, and death in Columbia, identified 
him racially and locally with that part of our country ; but, more 
than that, beneath his genuine poetic gift and the music of 
his verse, the delicate chivalry of his exaltation of woman and 
a certain strain of religious sincerity and reflectiveness were 
characteristic of the finer spirits of the South in his time, while 
the martial ring of his war lyrics during the great civil struggle 
was thoroughly expressive of his people. Both the Puritan 
poets, Longfellow and Whittier, recognized and hailed him 
as of their high fraternity. 

The best remaining piece of prose work from Timrod's 
pen is the essay entitled ''A Theory of Poetry," read by him 
for the benefit of a Soldiers' Hospital in Columbia in 1863. 
In it he takes issue with Poe's position in his essay on " The 
Poetic Principle " ^ as to the basis of true poetry. Although 
POE, later, somewhat modified his exclusion of the didactic, 
granting that it might have some poetic justification, Timrod's 
criticisms of his other omissions of poetic elements are very 
interesting and convincing. The essay was first printed, with 
comments by Henry Austin, in the New York Independent in 
I ^01, thirty-four years after the author's death, and is well 
worth preservation. 

1 The same idea is similarly expressed in Poe's " Philosophy 
of Composition," p. 97, herein. 



310 



A TJHEORY OF POETRY^ 

There have been few poetical eras without their 
pecuhar theories of poetry. But no age was ever so 
rich in poetical creeds as the first half of the present 
century. The expositions of some of these creeds 
are not without some value; one or two, indeed, 
though incomplete, are profound and philosophical, 
but the majority are utterly worthless. Every little 
poet "spins, toiling out his own cocoon," and wrap- 
ping himself snugly in it, to the exclusion of others, 
hopes to go down thus warmly protected to posterity. 

I shall pass most of these theories to consider only 
two; one of which I shall discuss at some length. 
The first is that definition of poetry which represents 
it simply as the expression in verse of thought, 
sentiment or passion, and which measures the dif- 
ference between the poet and versifier only by the 
depth,power,and vivacity of their several productions. 
This definition was ably advocated not long ago in a 
well-known Southern periodical by one of the most 
acute of Southern writers. It would not be difficult 
to prove its total inadequacy, but I do not think 
it necessary to do so, except so far as the proof of that 

^ Copyright, 1901, by W. A. COURTENAY. 
311 



312 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

inadequacy may be involved in the establishment of 
a theory opposed to it. 

The second theory which I desire to examine 
critically was propounded a number of years ago by 
the most exquisite poetical genius to which America 
has yet given birth. 

Poe begins his disquisition with the dogma that a 
long poem does not exist; that the phrase ^^a long 
poem^' is simply a flat contradiction in terms. He 
proceeds: 

"A poem deserves its title only insomuch as it excites 
by elevating the soul. The value of a poem is in the ratio 
of this elevating excitement. But all excitements are, 
by a psychical necessity, transient. That degree of ex- 
citement which would entitle a poem to be called so at 
all cannot be sustained throughout a composition of great 
length. After the lapse of half an hour at the very utmost, 
it flags, fails — a revulsion ensues — and then the poem 
is in effect, and in fact, no longer such." 

I am disposed to think that the young lady who 
pores over the metrical novels of Scott till midnight 
and wakes up the next morning with her bright eyes 
dimmed and a little swollen, or the young poet 
who follows for the first time the steps of Dante and 
his guide down the spiral abysses of his imaginary 
hell, could not easily be induced to assent to these 
assertions. The declaration made with such cool 
metaphysical dogmatism that ^^all excitements are, 
through a psychical necessity, transient,'' needs con- 



HENRY TIMROD 313 

siderable qualification. All violent excitements are, 
indeed, transient; but that moderate and chastened 
excitement which accompanies the perusal of the 
noblest poetry, of such poetry as is characterized 
not by a spasmodic vehemency and the short-lived 
power imparted by excessive passion, but by a 
thoughtful sublimity and the matured and almost 
inexhaustible strength of a healthy intellect, may 
be sustained, and often is, during a much longer 
period than the space of thirty minutes. I am will- 
ing to grant, however, that this excitement has also 
its limit, and that this limit is too narrow to permit 
the perusal, with any pleasure, at one sitting, of more 
than a fraction of a poem the length of ^^ Paradise 
Lost." I shall quote another paragraph and then 
proceed to show that such acknowledgment leads to 
no deduction that justifies the theory Poe has built 
upon it. 

"There are, no doubt, many who find it difficult to 
reconcile the critical dictum, that the 'Paradise Lost' is 
to be devoutly admired throughout, with the absolute 
impossibility of maintaining for it, during perusal, the 
amount of enthusiasm which the critical dictum would 
demand. This great work, in fact, is to be regarded 
as poetical only when, losing sight of the vital requisite 
in all works of art, unity, we view it merely as a series of 
minor poems. If, to preserve its unity, we read it, as 
would be necessary, at a single sitting, the result is but a 
constant alternation of excitement and depression. After 



314 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



a passage of platitude, which no critical prejudgment can 
force us to admire, there follows inevitably a passage 
of what we feel to be true poetry; but if, on completing 
the work, we read it again, omitting the first book — that 
is to say, commencing with the second — we shall be sur- 
prised at finding admirable that which we before condemned. 
It follows from all this that the ultimate or absolute effect 
of even the best epic under the sun is a nullity — and this 
is precisely the fact/' 

Let me call attention to the fact that, even if 
the argument I have just read prove all it assumes 
to prove, it amounts only to this : it shows, not that 
a long poem does not exist, or may not exist, but that, 
if there could be such a thing as a long poem, its 
effect, except as a series of short poems, v^ould be null 
and void. This fact, hovsrever, if properly established, 
would be an almost sufficient justification of Poe's 
theory; and I only mention it by way of causing it to 
be remembered that the demonstration is not quite 
so direct and positive as appears at first sight, or 
as it might, if the author had analyzed the work of 
which he speaks and shown at what point the first 
poem ends and the second begins. 

But I deny boldly and without reservation the 
truth of that assertion upon which the whole argu- 
ment hinges; that, in order to preserve in effect the 
unity of a great poem, it should be read through 
at a single sitting. ... It has been correctly 
remarked of the extracts which go by the name of 



HENRY TIMROD 315 

"The Beauties of Shakespeare'' that those passages 
lose more by being torn from the context than the 
dramas themselves would lose by being deprived of 
those passages altogether. This is true also, though 
doubtless not to so great an extent, of "Paradise 
Lost," and it could not be true if each book or part of 
a book, when considered merely portions of a series 
of poems, could so strongly affect us as they do when 
regarded as the fractions of a harmonious whole. 

For instance, the situation of the happy pair in 
Paradise is rendered a thousand times more pathetic 
than it would have been otherwise by our knowl- 
edge of the power of the tempter who is plotting their 
destruction without ; and of that power we could have 
no adequate conception if we had not seen the mighty. 
Arch-demon, his form not yet deprived of all its 
original brightness, his face intrenched with the 
deep scars of thunder, treading in unconquerable 
fortitude the burning marl; or, if we had not beheld 
him in the mighty council assembled under the roof 
of Pandemonium, opening in haughty preeminence 
of courage and hatred the bold adventure of scouting 
with hostile purpose the universe of God Omnipo- 
tent; if we had not followed him in his dusky flight 
through hell and his encounter with the grim, though 
kingly Shadow; in his painful voyage through Chaos, 
and his meeting — in which the mean, but profound, 
subtlety of his genius is brought distinctly into action 
— with the Archangel Uriel; and so on down to the 



3l6 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

moment he alights upon the summit of Niphates 
and turns to reproach the Sun and blaspheme the 
Creator; in fine, if we had not from all these sources 
derived an indelible impression of the cunning, the 
ferocity, the indomitable pride and daring reckless- 
ness of his character. 

Again, the fate of the guilty, but repentant, lovers 
touches us infinitely more deeply because we have 
been made familiar with the beauty of the home from 
which their sin had expelled them, that vast garden, 
which, with the eternal bloom of forests, abounds with 
fruits more precious than those of the Hesperides, 
amid undulations of hill and valley, with grottoes, 
fountains, and crisped brooks, ^^ rolling on Orient 
pearl and sands of gold,'' and feeding with nectar 
''Flowers of all hues and without thorn the rose"; 
a garden which with all this variety seemed almost 
as extensive as a kingdom, and is compact enough 
to occupy only the champaign-head of a steep and 
imperious wilderness that surrounds it as with a pro- 
tecting wall. But, of course, that which affects us 
most profoundly, and that which the poet meant to 
affect us most profoundly, is not the loss of Eden, but 
the difference between the primal condition of inno- 
cence from which they fell (and which is described 
with a softness and purity no merely amatory poet 
has ever equaled), and the state of mind in which, 
after dismissal by the angel, they look back to behold 
the Eastern Gate, " With dreadful faces thronged and 



HENRY TIMROD 317 

fiery arms," and then turning, with the world before 
them, but with slow and wandering steps, 

"Through Eden take their solitary way." 

I might go on and by minuter examination show 
still subtler connections between the several parts 
of the poem, but it is not necessary. I am satisfied 
to reaffirm my position that every portion of " Para- 
dise Lost" is bound together by the closest relations, 
each helping to give force to all; and, just as the 
light about us is not produced solely by the rays of 
the sun, but is composed of millions of atmospherical 
and other reflections, so the ultimate and aggregate 
effect of this truly great creation is made up of innu- 
merable lights and cross-lights that each book sheds 
upon the others. . . . 

What, then, is poetry? In the last century, if 
one had asked the question, one would have been 
answered readily enough; and the answer would 
have been the definition which I dismissed a little 
while ago as unworthy of minute examination. But 
the deeper philosophical criticism of the present 
century will not remain satisfied with such a surface 
view of poetry. Its aim is to penetrate to the es- 
sence, to analyze and comprehend those impres- 
sions and operations of mind, acting upon and being 
acted upon by mental or physical phenomena, which 
when incarnated in language, all recognize as the 
utterance of poetry and which affect us like the music 



3l8 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

of angels. That this is the aim of present criticism 
I need not attempt to show by quotation, since it 
looks out from the pages of the most popular writers 
of the day. . . . 

I think that Poe in his eloquent description of the 
poetical sentiment as the sense of the beautiful, and 
in its loftiest action as a struggle to apprehend a 
supernal loveUness, a wild effort to reach a beauty 
above that which is about us, has certainly fixed with 
some definiteness one phase of its merely subjective 
manifestation. It is, indeed, to the inspiration which 
lies in the ethereal, the remote, and the unknown that 
the world owes some of its sweetest poems; and the 
poetry of the words has never so strange a fascination 
as when it seems to suggest more than it utters; 
to call up by impUcation rather than by expression 
those thoughts which refuse to be embodied in lan- 
guage; to hint at something ineffable and mysterious 
of which the mind can attain but partial glimpses. 
But in making this feeling and this feeling only con- 
stitute the poetic sentiment, Poe simply verifies the 
remark of one of the most luminous critics of this 
country that we must look as little to men of peculiar 
and original genius as to the multitude for broad 
and comprehensive critical theories. Such men 
have usually one faculty developed at the expense 
of the others; and the very clearness of their percep- 
tion of one kind of excellence impairs their perception 
of other kinds. . . . 



HENRY TIMROD 319 

In order to perceive the real narrowness of Poe's 
theory, it is but necessary to examine the list of those 
elements which he says induce in the poet the true 
poetical effect, and mark how carefully he selects 
only such appearances as are simply beautiful or 
simply mysterious, and how sedulously he excludes 
all of the subUme and terrible in the phenomena of 
nature. 

''The poet," he says, ''recognizes the ambrosia that 
nourishes his soul in the bright orbs of heaven, in the 
volutes of the flowers, in the low clustering of shrubberies, 
in the slanting of tall Eastern trees, in the blue distance 
of mountains, in the grouping of clouds, in the gleaming 
of silver rivers, in the repose of sequestered lakes. He 
perceives it in the song of birds, in the harp of ^olus, in 
the sighing of the night-wind, in the perfume of the violet 
and in the suggestive odors that come to him at eventide 
over dim oceans from far distant and undiscovered lands.'' 

I have not enumerated all the influences to which 
he refers, but every one of them will be found upon 
examination to bear the same general character of 
quiet and gentle beauty. Let me ask in my turn 
whether there be no excitement of the poetical 
faculty in the clouded night as well as in the bright 
one; in the wrack of clouds by which the stars are 
driven in as well as in the purple islands and crimson 
archipelagoes of sunset; in the terror-stricken rain 
fleeing before the tempest as well as in the gentle and 
refreshing showers of April; in the craggy dangers 



320 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

as well as in the blue distances of mountains; in 
the rush of the tornado, which opens a road through 
deep, untraveled, and illimitable forests, as well as in 
the faint and fragrant sigh of the zephyr; in the 
lightning that shatters ^^ some great ammiral" 
doomed never again to be heard of; in the ear-split- 
ting crash of the thunder, the stricken pine, the 
blasted heath; in the tiger-haunted jungles of the 
Orient; in the vast Sahara, over which the sirocco 
sweeps Uke a breath of hell; in the barren and lonely 
cape strewn with wrecks and the precipitous prom- 
ontory which refuses to preserve, even a single 
plank of the ships that have been crushed against 
it; in the fearful tale suggested by the discovery of a 
human skeleton upon a desert island; in the march 
of the pestilence; in the bloody battles for freedom ; 
and in the strange noises and wild risks of an Arctic 
night, when the Great Pack has broken up and an 
Arctic storm is grinding and hurling the floes in 
thunder against each other. 

In the same manner, when the eloquent poet 
comes to seek the mental or moral stimulants of 
poetry, he finds them "in all unworldly motives, in 
all holy impulses, in all chivalrous and self-sacrificing 
deeds "; but he does not, like the profounder Words- 
worth, find them in the tranquil comforts of home, 
in the dignity of honest labor, in the charities of the 
beggar, and in those everyday virtues over which 
the human soul of Wordsworth's Muse broods in 



I 



HENRY TIMROD 3 21 

pleased contemplation. He sees no appeal to the 
faculties in the ^^ common things that round us lie/' 
in the fairy tales of science, in the magic of machin- 
ery, in the pen that writes and the types that im- 
mortalize his argument, in truth as truth merely, 
and in the lessons in which Nature is so bountiful 
that they may be gathered from the very dust we 
tread beneath our feet. 

I think, when we recall the many and varied 
sources of poetry, we must, perforce, confess that 
it is wholly impossible to reduce them all to the 
simple element of Beauty. Two other elements, at 
least, must be added, and these are Power, when it 
is developed in some noble shape, and Truth, whether 
abstract or not, when it affects the common heart of 
mankind. For the suggestion of those two addi- 
tional principles, I suppose I ought to say that I 
am indebted to Leigh Hunt; but I cannot help add- 
ing that I had fixed upon the same trinity of 
elements long before I became acquainted with his 
delightful book on Imagination and Fancy. 

It is, then, in the feelings awakened by certain 
moods of the mind, when we stand in the presence of 
Truth, Beauty and Power, that I recognize what we 
all agree to call poetry. To analyze the nature of 
these feeUngs, inextricably tangled as they are with 
the different faculties of the mind and especially 
with that great faculty which is the prime minister 
of poetry. Imagination, is not absolutely necessary 



322 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

to the present purpose. Let us be satisfied with 
having ascertained the elements which excite in us 
the sentiment of poetry. . . . 

The poet who first taught the few simple, but 
grand and impressive, truths which have blossomed 
into the poetic harvest of the nineteenth century 
was Wordsworth. The poetic Uterature of the age 
which preceded the appearance of Wordsworth was, 
in general, wholly artificial and conventional. . . . 
When he began to write, it was with the purpose of 
embodying in all the poetic forms at his command 
the two truths of which the poets and readers of his 
time seemed to him completely incognizant. These 
were, first, that the materials and stimulants of poetry 
might be found in some of the commonest things 
about us; and, second, that behind the sights, 
sounds, and hues of external nature there is '^some- 
thing more than meets the senses, something 
undefined and unutterable which must be felt and 
perceived by the soul'' in its moments of rapt con- 
templation. This latter feeling it is that constitutes 
the chief originality of Wordsworth. It is not to be 
found in Shakespeare or his contemporaries. It is 
not to be found in Milton, and, of course, not in 
Milton's successors; not in Dry den or Pope; not in 
Thomson or Cowper. It appeared for the first time 
in literature in the lines of Wordsworth written near 
Tintern Abbey. Since then it has been caught up 
and shadowed forth by every poet from Byron to the 



HENRY TIMROD ^2;^ 

present English Laureate [Tennyson], I cannot un- 
derstand how any one can read that profound poem 
and then remain satisfied with the dictum of Poe 
that the sole office of a poem should be the develop- 
ment of Beauty alone. . . . 

Wordsworth could never have been brought to 
agree with Poe that a true poem is written for the 
poem's sake alone. The theory which Poe very 
naturally evolved from his own genius Wordsworth 
quite as naturally would have thought incompatible 
with the high office of the poet as teacher, thinker, and 
bard. On the other hand, the broader vision of 
Tennyson has enabled him to detect the truth that 
lies on the side of Poe and the truth that lies on the 
side of Wordsworth. The proof that a poet may aim 
at Beauty alone, without an ulterior purpose, he sees 
in every daisy and buttercup of an English meadow. 

*^0h, to what uses shall we put 
The wildwood flower that simply blows? 
And is there any moral shut 
Within the bosom of the rose?" 

Nevertheless does he recognize the right of the poet 
to make his art the vehicle of great moral and philo- 
sophical lessons; nevertheless does he see his right 
to grapple with the darkest problems of man's 
destiny, to discuss the fears and perplexities of the 
spirit and the faith that triumphs over them; and 



324 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



even to drop now and then a silken line in the dim 
sea of metaphysics. . . . 

Oh! rest assured that there are no stereotyped 
forms of poetry. It is a vital power, and may as- 
sume any guise and take any shape, at one time 
towering like an Alp in the darkness and at another 
sunning itself in the bell of a tulip or the cup of a 
lily; and until one shall have learned to recognize 
it in all its various developments he has no right to 
echo back the benison of Wordsworth, — 

*^ Blessings be on them and eternal praise, 
The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
Of Truth and pure delight in heavenly lays.'^ 



SIDNEY LANIP:R 

I 842-1 88 I 



PER aspera ad astra might have been the motto of this 
gallant spirit. Born in Macon, Georgia, Lanier, when hardly 
out of college, at the age of nineteen, enlisted in the Con- 
federate army, and came out at the end of the struggle 
depleted of physique. Descended from a musical ancestry, 
he was born a musician. His earliest passion was music. 
Of the six instruments he played, his favorite was the flute, 
and he managed to keep one with him through war and captiv- 
ity, for the solace of himself and others. A great reader, 
especially in the English classics, his second passion was 
poetry, which he held as a variety of music. 

Life went hard with Lanier after the war, through varied 
experience in several callings, — teaching, law-practice, and, 
after removing to Baltimore (1873), signalizing his devotion to 
music by playing the flute in the Peabody Symphony Orchestra. 
In that city, however, a volume of his poems and some literary 
lectures made his fine qualities more publicly known, and he 
became, in 1879, lecturer on English literature in Johns Hopkins 
University. Cheered by a noble wife and loving children, he 
battled bravely with the mortal disease that was upon him, 
and besides his professional duties edited for boys several of 
the elder classics — Froissart, King Arthur, and the Mabino- 
gion. These were widely approved, and his exquisite poetical 
gift won its way with the discriminating. Since his decease 
in 1881 his lectures and essays, which had appeared in various 
periodicals, have been gathered and published in the more 
permanent book form: ''The English Novel and its Develop- 
ment" (1883), ''The Science of English Verse" (1885), ''Music 
and Poetry" (1898), from which last is here reprinted the essay 
on music, "From Bacon to Beethoven" (omitting some of the 
detailed illustrations of his argument). In 1884 also was 
issued a volume of his collected "Poems," with a finely appre- 
ciative memoir by Dr. William Hayes Ward. 



326 



FROM BACON TO BEETHOVEN^ 

Themistocles being '^ desired at a feast to touch a 
lute, said *he could not fiddle, but yet he could make 
a small town a great city/ If a true survey be 
taken of councilors and statesmen, there may be 
found (though rarely) those that can make a small 
state great and yet cannot fiddle; as, on the other 
side, there will be found a great many that can fiddle 
very cunningly but yet . . . their gift lieth the other 
way, to bring a great and flourishing estate to ruin 
and decay. And certainly those degenerate arts and 
shifts whereby many councilors and governors gain 
both favor with their masters and estimation with 
the vulgar deserve no better name than fiddling, 
being rather pleasing for the time, and graceful to 
themselves only, than tending to the weal and ad- 
vancement of the state which they serve.'' 

My Lord Bacon has here used the term "fiddling'' 

— with a propriety wholly unsuspected by himself 

— to denote the whole corpus of musical art. He 
clearly believes that in discussing the value of musical 
as opposed to political affairs he has expressed the 
pithiest possible contempt for the former by the mere 

^ From ''Music and Poetry/' by Sidney Laniep; copy- 
right, 1898, by Mary D. Lanier. 

327 



328 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

nickname he has given them in translating the mot 
of Themistocles. 

It was just about the time when the wise fool 
Francis was writing his essay Of Kingdoms and 
Estates that the world was beginning to think ear- 
nestly upon the real significance of tones; for it was 
in this period that music — what we moderns call 
music — was born. The prodigious changes which 
the advent of this art has wrought in some of our 
largest conceptions could not have been foreseen even 
by the author of the Instauratio Magna. . . . 

The amiable Tyndall relates that when he was once 
about to perform a new experiment for Mr. Faraday 
in his laboratory, the latter stopped him, saying, 
^^ First tell me what I am to look for." Following 
this wise precaution, let the reader look for, and carry 
mainly with him, in the following discussion, these 
principal ideas: — 

That music is the characteristic art-form of the 
modern time, as sculpture is of the antique and paint- 
ing is of the medieval time; 

That this is necessarily so, in consequence of cer- 
tain curious relations between unconventional musi- 
cal tones and the human spirit, — particularly the 
human spirit at its present stage of growth; 

That this growth indicates a time when the control 
of masses of men will be more and more relegated to 
each unit thereof, when the law will be given from 
within the bosom of each individual, — not from 



SIDNEY LANIER 329 

without, — and will rely for its sanctions upon 
desire instead of repugnance; 

That in intimate connection with this change in 
man's spirit there proceeds a change in man's rela- 
tions to the Unknown, whereby (among other things) 
that relation becomes one of love rather than of 
terror; 

That music appears to offer conditions most fa- 
vorable to both these changes, and that it will there- 
fore be the reigning art until they are accomplished, 
or at least greatly forwarded. 

Perhaps the most effectual step a man can take in 
ridding himself of the clouds which darken most 
speculations upon these matters is to abandon im- 
mediately the idea that music is a species of language, 
— which is not true, — and to substitute for that the 
converse idea that language is a species of music. 
A language is a set of tones segregated from the great 
mass of musical sounds, and endowed, by agreement, 
with fixed meanings. The Anglo-Saxons have, for 
example, practically agreed that if the sound man is 
uttered, the intellects of all Anglo-Saxon hearers will 
act in a certain direction, and always in that direction 
for that sound. But in the case of music no such 
convention has been made. The only method of 
affixing a definite meaning to a musical composition 
is to associate with the component tones of it either 
conventional words, intelligible gestures, or famihar 



330 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

events and places. When a succession of tones is 
played, the intellect of the hearer may move; but 
the movements are always determined by influences 
wholly extraneous to the purely musical tones, — 
such as associations with words, with events, or with 
any matters which place definite intellectual forms 
(that is, ideas) before the mind. 

It is to this idiosyncrasy of music that it owes the 
honor of having been selected by the modern Age as a 
characteristic art-form. For music, freed from the 
stern exactions of the intellect, is also freed from the 
terrible responsibiUties of reaUsm. 

It will be instructive to array some details of the 
working of this principle. 

Let the general reader recall to himself three great 
classifications of human activity. The universe 
consists (say) of man, and of what is not man. These 
two being coexistent, it is in the nature of things 
that certain relations shall straightway spring up 
between them. Of such relations there are three 
possible kinds, regarding them from the standpoint 
of man. These kinds are the intellectual, the emo- 
tional, and the physical. Whenever a man knows 
a thing, the intellectual relation is set up. When 
he loves or desires a thing, the emotional relation 
is set up. When he touches or sees a thing, the phys- 
ical relation is set up. 

Now, whatever may be the class of relations with 
which music deals, it is not the first class above 



SIDNEY LANIER 33 1 

named, — the intellectual. This has sometimes 
been doubted. But the doubt is due mainly to a 
certain confusion of thought which has arisen from 
the circumstance that the most common and familiar 
musical instrument happens to be at the same time 
what may be called an intellectual instrument, — 
i,e, the organ of speech. With the great majority 
of the human race the musical tones which are most 
frequently heard are those of the human voice. 
But these tones — which are as wholly devoid of 
intellectual signification in themselves as if they 
were enounced from a viohn or flute — are usually 
produced along with certain vowel and consonantal 
com^binations which go to make up words, and which 
consequently have conventional meanings. In this 
way significations belonging exclusively to the words 
of a song are often transferred by the hearer to the 
tones of the melody. In reaHty they are absolutely 
distinct. 

In other words, the intellectual relations are not 
affected by pure tones, — not by the tones of the 
human voice any more than the tones of a violin. 
Whenever intellectual relations are determined by 
tones, it is not in virtue of their character as tones, 
but because of certain conventional agreements 
whereby it has been arranged that upon the hearing 
of these tones, as upon the hearing of so many signals, 
the intellects of the auditors will all move in certain 
directions. It may strengthen the conception of this 



332 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

principle to recall here that other signals than tones 
might have been agreed upon for this purpose. Ges- 
tures, indeed, are used with quite as much effect as 
tone-language in many dramatic situations, and 
constitute the entire speech of many persons. The 
selection of tones, rather than of other sorts of signals, 
to convey ideas has not been made because the tones 
had intrinsic significations, but upon purely a pos- 
teriori and economic considerations, the main one 
being that there is no means of producing so great 
a variety of signals with so little expenditure of 
muscular force comparable to that of the human 
voice. . . . 

Once for all, — for it is a principle of such funda- 
mental importance as to warrant its repetition in 
many forms, — musical tones have in themselves 
no meaning appreciable by the human intellect. . . . 

A painting is an imitation, upon a flat surface, of 
things which are not flat; it is an imitation, upon a 
surface l3ang wholly in one plane, of things whose 
planes lie at all manner of angles with each other; it 
is an imitation of three dimensions by two, and of 
horizontal distance upon vertical distance. These 
imitations . . . can be accomphshed because hu- 
man vision is not unerringly keen. 

It is through the limitations of the eye that painting 
is possible. Perhaps this could not have been prop- 
erly understood before Bishop Berkeley unfolded the 
true nature of vision and the dependence of the 



SIDNEY LANIER 333 

reports brought in by the sense of sight upon many 
other matters which are the result of judgments 
founded on experience. It may fairly be said to have 
been established by that acute speculator that we 
do not see either distance or magnitude, — that is, 
that these two particulars are not immediate deliver- 
ances of the sense of sight, but are the results of a 
comparison which the mind draws between present 
and certain remembered appearances gathered by 
touch, hearing, and other senses. This comparison 
is made rapidly, and the judgments founded on it 
are practically instantaneous ; but the fact remains 
that distance and magnitude are mainly not given by 
the eye, but deduced by reason as inferences from 
several particulars which have been communicated 
by other senses in addition to sight. 

It is, then, this defective organ which is practiced 
upon (of course not in the bad sense) by the art of 
painting. Every one, therefore, upon approaching a 
painting, goes through a preliminary series of allow- 
ances and of (in a certain sense) forgivenesses. 
These allowances are made so habitually that they 
frequently become unnoticed, and many will be sur- 
prised at remembering that they are made at all. 
But something hke this typic discussion always occurs 
in practice when one is before a painting for the first 
time. "Here,'' says the eye, "is an imitation of a 
mountain.'' 

"Absurd," replies the judgment, which has often 



334 



BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 



before tested the reports of the eye by reports of the 
touch, the ear, and other senses, and has learned to 
correct them accordingly; ^Hhe mountain is a mile 
high, while the canvas is not three feet. But let 
it pass." . . . 

Now, it is easy to conceive a stage of growth of the 
human spirit when the necessity of making these 
realistic comparisons would be no hindrance at all, 
but a refreshment and an advantage. In the medie- 
val time, for example, when the subtle disquisitions 
of the schoolmen abandoned the real entirely and 
busied themselves with pure figments of human 
fancy, — when bigotry was piled upon bigotry 
and fanaticism upon fanaticism, until all trace of the 
actual earth and of actual human nature was ob- 
scured, — in such a time, men's minds would experi- 
ence a sense of relief and of security in contemplating 
works of art composed of firm and definite forms 
whose accuracy could be brought to satisfactory tests 
of actual measurement. Accordingly, we find the 
artist of the medieval time to be a painter, seeking 
refuge from the instabilities and vaguenesses of the 
prevalent thought of the time in the sharply out- 
lined figures which he could fix upon his canvas. 

These considerations apply with still greater force 
to the antique time, with its peculiar art of sculpture. 
In an age when men knew so little of the actual phys- 
ical world that the main materials and subjects of 
thought were mere fancies and juggles of ingenious 



SIDNEY LANIER 335 

speculators, it must have been a real rest for the mind 
to fix itself upon the sohd and enduring images of 
undeceptive stone which the artists furnished forth 
from their wonderful brains and chisels. The need 
of such rest, though not, of course, consciously recog- 
nized by the sculptors, was really the reason of their 
being. In such matters Nature takes care of her own. 
She knows the peculiar hunger of an age, and fashions 
the appropriate satisfactions to it. 

Here, now, we are arrived at the crisis of the argu- 
ment. What has been said of the relations of sculp- 
ture and painting to the times in which they flour- 
ished is but the special application of a general 
underlying principle which may be thus stated: 
The Art of any age will be complementary to the 
Thought of that age. 

In the light of this principle, let us examine the 
attitude of music towards the present time. A priori, 
one will expect to find that in an age of physical 
science, when the intellect of man imperiously de- 
mands the exact truth of all actual things and is 
possessed with a holy mania for reality, the charac- 
teristic Art will be one affording an outlet from the 
rigorous fixedness of the actual and of the known 
into the freer regions of the possible and of the un- 
known. This reasoning becomes verified as soon 
as we collate the facts. With sufl&cient accuracy 
in view of the size of the terms, it may be said that 
the rise of modern music has been simultaneous with 



336 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

that of modern physical science. And what more 
natural ? I have endeavored to show that music 
is of all arts that which has least to do with realism, 
that which departs most widely from the rigid defi- 
nitions and firm outlines which the intellect (I use 
this term always in its strict sense as referring to the 
cognitive or thinking activity of man, in contra- 
distinction to the emotional or conative activity) 
demands. In music there is no preliminary allow- 
ance to be made by the ear, as was alleged to be 
made by the eye in painting ; there is no forgiveness, 
in consideration of the impossible ; there is no ques- 
tion of vraisemblancej no chill of discussion, at the 
outset. Even in the case of programme-music, where 
a suggestion is made to the intellect by imitation of 
familiar sounds, the imitation is, as already shown 
[as in the nightingale passage in Beethoven's Pastoral 
Symphony], really no imitation, does not pretend 
to be or set up for a vraisemblant representation, but 
is a mere hint, with purposes wholly ulterior to and 
beyond the small puerility which imitation would be 
if sought as an end in itself. Moreover, in all cases 
of programme-music, even if the attempt at carry- 
ing along the intellect fails, the music as an emotional 
satisfaction remains. If bad as a programme, it is 
still good as music. 

Music, then, being free from the weight and burden 
of realism, — its whole modus being different from 
that of imitative and plastic art, — its peculiar 



SIDNEY LANIER 337 

activity being in the same direction with that of 
those emotions by which man relates himself (as I 
hope to show further on) to the infinite, — what more 
natural than that the spirit of man should call upon 
it for relief from the pressure and grind of Fact, 
should cry to it, with earnest pathos, ^Xome, lead 
me away out of this labyrinth of the real, the definite, 
the known, into, or at least towards, the region of the 
ideal, the infinite, the unknown: knowledge is good, 
I will continue to thirst and to toil for it, but, alas! 
I am blind even with the blaze of the sun ; take me 
where there is starlight and darkness, where my 
eyes shall rest from the duties of verification and my 
soul shall repose from the labor of knowing'' ? 

But this is only a rudimentary statement of the 
agency of music in modern civilization, intended to 
bring prominently forward its attitude towards sci- 
ence. The musician is the complement of the 
scientist. The latter will superintend our knowing; 
the former will superintend our loving. 

I use this last term advisedly, intending by it to 
advance a step in the investigation of the nature of 
music. For the mission of music is not merely to be 
a quietus and lullaby to the soul of a time that is 
restless with science. This it does, but does as an 
incident of far higher work. 

On an earlier page, the reader's attention was re- 
called to three classes of activities by which a man 
relates himself to that part of the universe which is 



338 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

not himself, — namely, the cognitive (or '^intellec- 
tual," as I have used the term here, not to be too 
technical for the general reader), the emotional, and 
the physical. Now, man strives always to place him- 
self in relation not only with those definite forms 
which go to make up the finite world about him, but 
also with that indefinite Something up to which every 
process of reasoning, every outgo of emotion, every 
physical activity, inevitably leads him, — God, 
the Infinite, the Unknown. The desire of man is 
that he may relate himself with the Infinite both in 
the cognitive and in the emotional way. Sir William 
Hamilton showed clearly how impossible was any 
full relation of the former sort, in showing that cog- 
nition itself was a conditioning (i.e. a defining, a 
placing of boundaries appreciable by the intellect), 
and that therefore the knowing of the Infinite was 
the conditioning of the Unconditioned, — in short, 
impossible. This seemed to preclude the possibility 
of any relation from man to God of the cognitive 
sort ; but Mr. Herbert Spencer has relived the blank- 
ness of this situation by asserting the possibility of a 
partial relation still. We cannot think God, it is 
true ; but we can think towards Him. This in point 
of fact is what men continually do. The definition in 
the catechism, '*God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and 
unchangeable in His being, wisdom," etc., is an effort 
of man to relate himself to God in the cognitive, or 
intellectual, way: it is a thinking towards God. 



SIDNEY LANIER 339 

Now, there is a constant endeavor of man, but one 
to which less attention has been paid by philosophers, 
to relate himself with the Infinite not only in the cog- 
nitive way just described, but also in the emotional 
way. Just as persistently as our thought seeks the 
Infinite, does our emotion seek the Infinite. We not 
only wish to think it, we wish to love it; and as our 
love is not subject to the disabilities of our thought, 
the latter of these two wishes would seem to be ca- 
pable of a more complete fulfillment than the former. 
It has been shown that we can only think towards 
the Infinite ; it may be that our love can reach nearer 
its Object. 

As a philosophic truth, music does carry our emo- 
tion towards the Infinite. No man will doubt this 
who reflects for a moment on the rise of music in the 
Church. The progress of this remarkable phenom- 
enon will have probably come, in some way, under 
the notice of the youngest person who will read this 
paper. ... 

Everywhere one finds increasing the number of 
fervent souls who fare easily by this road to the Lord. 
From the negro swaying to and fro with the weird 
rhythms of ^^ Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,'' from the 
Georgia Cracker yelling the ''Old Ship of Zion'' to 
the heavens through the logs of the piney-woods 
church, to the intense devotee rapt away into the 
Infinite upon a Mass of Palestrina, there comes but 
one testimony to the substantial efficacy of music 



340 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

in this matter of helping the emotion of man across 
the immensity of the known into the boundaries 
of the Unknown. Nay, there are those who go 
further than this: there are those who declare that 
music is to be the Church of the future, wherein all 
creeds will unite hke the tones in a chord. 

Now, it cannot be that music has taken this place 
in the deepest and hohest matters of man's Ufe 
through mere fortuitous arrangement. It must be 
that there exists some sort of relation between pure 
tones and the spirit of man by virtue of which the 
latter is stimulated and forced onward towards the 
great End of all love and aspiration. What may be 
the nature of this relation, — why it is that certain 
vibrations sent forw^ard by the tympanum along the 
bones and fluids of the inner ear should at length 
arrive at the spirit of man endowed with such a pro- 
digious and heavenly energy, — at what point of the 
course they acquire this capacity of angels, being, 
up to that point, mere particles trembhng hither and 
thither, — these are, in the present state of our 
knowledge, mysteries which no man can unravel. 

It is through this relation of music to man that it 
becomes, as I said in the principles affirmed at the 
outset, a moral agent. ... 

One hears all about the world nowadays that art is 
wholly un-moral, that art is for art's sake, that art has 
nothing to do with good or bad in behavior. These 
are the cries of clever men whose cleverness can imi- 



SIDNEY LANIER 34I 

tate genius so aptly as to persuade many that they 
have genius, and whose smartness can preach so 
incisively about art that many believe them to be 
artists. But such catch-words will never deceive 
the genius, the true artist. The true artist will 
never remain a bad man ; he will always wonder at a 
wicked artist. The simplicity of this wonder renders 
it wholly impregnable. The argument of it is merely 
this: the artist loves beauty supremely; because 
the good is beautiful, he will clamber continuously 
towards it, through all possible sloughs, over all 
possible obstacles, in spite of all possible falls. 

This is the artist's creed. Now, just as music 
increases in hearty acceptance among men, so will 
this true artistic sense of the loveliness of morality 
spread, so will the attractiveness of all that is pure 
and lovely grow in power, and so will the race progress 
towards that time described in the beginning of this 
essay as one in which the law would cease to rely 
upon terror for its sanction, but depend wholly upon 
love and desire. . . . 

Never was any art so completely a household art as 
is the music of to-day ; and the piano has made this 
possible. 

As the American is, with all his shortcomings of 
other sorts, at any rate most completely the man of 
to-day, so it is directly in the line of this argument 
to say that one finds more ^Halent for music'' among 
the Americans, especially among American women. 



342 BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 

than among any other people. The musical sense 
is very widely diffused among us, and the capacity 
for musical execution is strikingly frequent. 

When Americans shall have learned the supreme 
value and glory of the orchestra, — when we shall 
have advanced beyond the piano, which is, as matters 
now exist, a quite necessary stage in musical growth, 
— when our musical yoimg women shall have found 
that, if their hands are too small for the piano, or 
if they have no voices, they can study the flute, the 
violin, the oboe, the bassoon, the viola, the violon- 
cello, the horn, the corno Inglese, — in short, every 
orchestral instrument, — and that they are quite 
as capable as men — in some cases much better fitted 
by nature than any man — to play all these, then 
I look to see America the home of the orchestra, 
and to hear everywhere the profound messages of 
Beethoven and Bach to men. . . . 

As for Beethoven, it is only of late that his happy 
students have begun to conceive the true height and 
magnitude of his nature. The educational value of 
his works upon the understanding soul which has 
yielded itself to the rapture of their teaching is un- 
speakable, and is of a sort which almost compels 
a man to shed tears of gratitude at every mention 
of this master's name. For in these works are many 
qualities which one could not expect to find coher- 
ing in any one human spirit. Taking Beethoven's 
Sonatas (which, by the way, no one will ever properly 



SIDNEY LANIER 343 

appreciate until he regards them really as symphonies, 
and mentally distributes the parts among flutes, 
reeds, horns, and strings as he goes through them), 
his songs, his symphonies, together, I know not where 
one will go to find in any human products such large- 
ness, such simplicity, such robust manliness, such 
womanly tenderness, such variety of invention, such 
parsimony of means with such splendor of effects, 
such royal grandeur without pretense, such pomp 
with such modesty, such unfailing moderation and 
exquisite right feeling in art, such prodigious trans- 
formations and re-transformations of the same 
melody, — as if the blue sky should alternately 
shrink into a blue violet and then expand into a sky 
again, — such love-making to the infinite and the 
finite, such range of susceptibility, such many-sided- 
ness in offering some gift to every nature and every 
need, such comprehension of the whole of human life. 

There is but one name to which one can refer in 
speaking of Beethoven: it is Shakespeare. 

For as Shakespeare is, so far, our king of conven- 
tional tones, so is Beethoven our king of unconven- 
tional tones. And as music takes up the thread 
which language drops, so it is where Shakespeare 
ends that Beethoven begins. 



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